


And I Shall Love You, Imperfectly And Stupidly

by lola (chaeyoongs)



Series: And I Shall Love You, Imperfectly And Stupidly [1]
Category: League of Legends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkwardness, Cancer, Depression, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, Family Drama, First Dates, Fluff, Foreshadowing, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Making Out, Minor Character Death, More tags to be added, Moving On, Mutual Pining, Self-Destruction, Sexual Tension, Strangers to Lovers, Suicide, Timeloops, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:34:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 51,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26212744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaeyoongs/pseuds/lola
Summary: "Although it was dark, Settrigh could tell that [the man] was pretty. And tired. But mostly pretty. Very much so. From all those movies Settrigh had watched and all the novels he had read he knew that some people just had the ability to stir something deep inside one. That with the first locking of gazes there was that certain sensation in someone's belly or fingertips. A soft tingle, a mushy, intangible attraction to one's aura, to their way of just standing there and looking back."Settrigh falls for his new neighbour Aphelios, stupidly and imperfectly and utterly irrevocably. When he is faced with the loss of his love, he tries to save him but maybe Aphelios cannot be saved.
Relationships: Aphelios/Sett (League of Legends), Sett (League of Legends)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: And I Shall Love You, Imperfectly And Stupidly [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985083
Comments: 187
Kudos: 128





	1. Part I - Neighbours

**Author's Note:**

> Finally! After more than two months I present to you the fanfiction that all my friends only know as "the timeloop thing" that I wouldn't shut up about! :D  
> Each part describes a different stage of Aphelios' and Sett's love, tags will be added with every WEEKLY update. Yes, you read that right, WEEKLY. So no finishing after three years like it might have happened before...
> 
> I thank everyone who listened to me sobbing and rambling about this plot and especially Jake for beta-reading all this agony. I love you!
> 
> As always, my Twitter is @chaeyoongsao3 and if anyone is interested in joining a Settphel community, here is the invitation link to our DC server: https://discord.gg/Me2sfXV

1

The apartment complex Settrigh had been living in with his momma ever since his dad had left was a little rundown. It had eight stories, the hallways smelled like a weird mixture of paint and moist wood and the elevator creaked dangerously whenever unknowing newcomers dared to use it. The outside was painted  an  ugly yellow, faint and shaped by decades of having not been renovated.

Overall, it wasn't a place young people would choose to move in to . But the rent was - understandably - cheap and the  nearest  university was only 20 minutes away by subway. Therefore, it didn't surprise Settrigh to see young couples and undergraduates move here from time to time only to then leave again once they had the chance to call a more presentable place their new home.

His momma and he had never quite had that chance. She had fallen for his dad at a young age and, much to her parents' dismay, married and  given  birth to Settrigh only a year into their relationship. Sometimes she would stroke his reddish-brown hair and tell him about her stupidity. That she had loved too intensely without even knowing what love was. That she had been selfish and yet selfless in giving her all to Settrigh's dad. That it probably had been the reason why he hadn't felt the need to give anything in return.

Settrigh's father had left them when he was only three and now, having turned 22, he hardly remembered him. He was only a dark silhouette in the very furthermost corner of his mind  that  he couldn't have cared less about - although, if someone were to ask him, he would say that he hated him. He hated him because he had left his momma with nothing but tears and a toddler, no financial nor familial support all because of him and he hated him because Settrigh had never had a father to look up to like those other kids in school had.

He figured that he wanted to be a better man than him.

His mother had been working two jobs for most of Settrigh's life until he was old enough to work outside of school. When he graduated at the earliest occasion, he started his apprenticeship as a geriatric nurse. His momma always used to tell him how charming and gentle he could be and that it was exactly what the elderly needed. And Settrigh thought, it was well-paid and it would make his momma happy.

After a few months, he even got used to the yelling and, because he had never been too good at getting attached, the many deaths. He liked going to work, liked sitting next to some of the elderly women and read the newspaper to them. Sometimes he would bring his momma along and they would eat cake and play board games. She seemed to enjoy watching her son work and get along so well with his  patients . It was all that mattered, in a way. She had given up her life to make Settrigh's childhood enjoyable and like any other boy's and he didn't mind giving up a few years of his own time to make it better for her.

Maybe, part of it was also to repay her for all the troubles he had caused her when he was younger. Growing up without his old man, he had never been a good talker and when at some point his classmates had started to make fun of him and his clothes and his almost unnatural hair, he had learned how to answer with tiny fists instead. Those fists grew and with them, his mother's sorrow. She had wanted her son to be strong but not in a way that harmed others the way that they harmed him.

It took Settrigh until middle school and two expulsions to realize that he wouldn't become a better man than his father by continuing to live like that. He had told his momma that he wanted to start boxing instead and that he would no longer worry her if he just found new ways to deal with all the things he felt and couldn't express.

She had teared up when he had made that suggestion and pulled him against her chest, telling him that she had been proud of him. That he had been growing up to be such a good man.

It was those things that kept him going, even on days like that particular Saturday. Settrigh was on one of his "Hub-shifts". His job was to spend time with the few elderly of the home for assisted living that were suffering from dementia. They were brought to the so-called "Hub" every morning to be entertained, have their breakfast, lunch and dinner and silently listen to music. Mostly as it wasn't safe for them to stay in their apartments anymore. One of the women of the Hub had almost burnt down half of her flat because of a candle. That had been four years ago in Settrigh's first year as an apprentice and he had never felt quite that helpless.

Usually, the Hub-shift was the more relaxing one. When he wasn't feeding old people and reading fairytales to the heavily demented ones, he could sit down and do crossword puzzles or talk to his co-workers, drink watered down apple juice.

However, today everyone seemed to go insane and Settrigh along with them. It had all started in the morning with Mrs. Starling not wanting to be brought into the Hub. Settrigh had spent almost 30 minutes trying to convince her. Normally, he would have just left her but she was in the bathroom, refusing to get up and whenever Settrigh dared to get near her, she scratched and spat on him while calling him a stupid dog.

It had taken him a lot of deep breaths to stay at least the tiniest bit respectful. After what felt like ages, he managed to get her somewhat cleanly dressed and tucked in her bed with everything sharp out of her reach. Settrigh was lucky that her legs couldn't hold her anymore, otherwise, she probably would have done God  knows  what.

Arriving at the Hub, Mrs. Black was throwing a tantrum. She had been for a bit now. She was asking about her husband and her children and demanded that someone would call them. She couldn't let them starve while she was eating breakfast so well. There were days when Settrigh or one of the other nurses took the time and sat down next to her, explaining that her husband had died many years ago and that her children were adults now, safe and sound. Today wasn't one of those days. No one seemed to have the nerve to do it. And because the truth couldn't get Mrs. Black to stop yelling "Hello" and "I demand a telephone" through the entire Hub, the other visitors started to get tense.

Half an hour later, the effect of the sedative set in. It stayed quiet for the most part only to then escalate during lunch again. By then, Settrigh had stuffed himself with two slices of bread with jam and  drunk  enough apple juice to stare Mr. Connor dead in the eye while cutting his chicken far away from his hitting fists.

He told him that if he wanted to throw a punch, he better hit it because Settrigh would continue to cut his chicken whether Mr. Connor wanted  it  or not.

2

Throughout the afternoon, Settrigh was faced with many more situations where he was thankful for the tasty jam the retirement home provided and his momma's love. Without it, he probably would have quit still during his apprenticeship.

When he finally peeled himself out of his uniform, squeezing it into the laundry - There had been an "accident" because Mrs. Clyde had fallen asleep during coffee and cake without being brought to the toilet before -, he stretched his arms and back with a heavy groan falling from his lips. Tomorrow, he would have a day off and, dear, did he need it. He already planned on going to the studio and training until he was nearly passing out.

He got dressed hurriedly, checked his locker for anything that he might need the next day and eventually closed it shut, followed by the door to the dressing rooms. His knitted sweater felt nice against his  - during work  \-  usually uncovered arms, especially when he stepped  out  into the cold of the Spring evening. He inhaled the air deeply. It stung a little with the past rain and creeping darkness but it was a welcome change to the sticky air inside the Hub. The people there were always freezing so the only time he would have the chance to breathe in anything else than sweat, the refusal to be showered and overlapping perfumes was during his lunch break.

Settrigh liked walking home sometimes. Today, he just wanted to get back as quickly as possible. He took the next subway  train . Two stations later, he then got out and a few apartment complexes after he was greeted by the washy yellow. Crazy how something as ugly as that could be missed when things got out of hand at work.

The hallway smelled like dinner beside the usual stinge and Settrigh took two steps at once. Reaching the third floor, he was hardly out of breath. All the running around, lifting old people and all those years spent in the ring had made him resilient to any kind of physical exhaustion - something he was proud of.

He pushed his shoulder against the tight door and could already detect the smell of home - cooked dinner that fully enclosed him once he stepped inside. Settrigh kicked off his shoes and after a moment of consideration, he neatly arranged them next to the other pairs, didn't want to make a mess of the hallway.

"  'M  home, ma", Settrigh said loudly enough for her to hear as he opened the door to his room to throw his backpack inside  before continuing  towards the kitchen.

His mother was a small yet curvy woman with a big smile and an even bigger heart. Settrigh had inherited her brown hair with the heavily red taint and whenever she cupped his cheeks , she said that he had her eyes.

She liked wearing dresses and aprons from all those years of working as a waitress and part-time chef in some cheap diners. She had never been taken quite seriously as a single mother without any degree or references but she had still managed. She had managed and now she made the best sandwiches and lemonade Settrigh had ever tasted in his entire life.

The moment she heard her son's voice, she looked over her shoulder to see Settrigh entering. The  kitchen  and living area was one fairly large room with a kitchen unit on the one  side  and a couch with a small TV on the other side. She was standing at the stove and flashing a large smile at her son.

"Perfect timing", his momma said.

Her words were accompanied by an alarm going off. She grabbed the egg timer and huffed while turning off the buzzing thing. The heat of the oven when she opened it reached Settrigh's face.

He stepped a little closer to examine the pot on the stove and he couldn't help but grin widely. The stew boiling looked delicious and his mother's freshly baked baguette was hard to resist. Sometimes she made three batches of two baguettes  each  and supplied some of their neighbours with it. In return, they would gift her  with  plants or ingredients and they would always lend her flour when she needed some on Sundays. When it came to charming others and just getting along well with everyone, Settrigh was a lot like his momma.

One of her most eager fans had been an elderly woman who used to live in the apartment next door. She died a month ago and Settrigh's mother always seemed a little sad when she made pie, knowing she wouldn't eat it during a few cups of tea in the woman's living room. She used to own a lot of cat figurines, stuffed animals and printed pillows. Wherever one had looked, there had been kittens. The thing that Settrigh had found the oddest was, however, that each and every one of them had had their own name that the woman had remembered until her last day.

"Go, sit down", Settrigh's mother hushed him with a waving hand, trying to steer him away from the stove and onto the couch.

"Nope", he returned smirking and grabbed one of the dishtowels along with a coaster wrapped around the drawer handle.

With a "That done?" he lifted the pot and carried it to the coffee table. His mother used to knit a lot of tablecloths in various colours. Every now and then she would change it according to the season - or her mood. Orange wasn't her first choice for spring. She had to be feeling extra energetic today unlike the rest of Settrigh's environment.

Settrigh could practically feel how she rolled her eyes at him but she hastily followed her son with two plates and cutlery. They set the (coffee) table and sat down on either side of it between yellow cushions and gentle blankets tossed over every armrest.

"Thanks for the meal, ma", Settrigh mentioned genuinely as he filled both their plates with hefty stew and ripped off a piece of baguette for each of them.

His momma looked at him with an endearing smile and told him to eat well as he looked tired.

At that, Settrigh snorted lightly. He buried one of his hands in his quickly growing hair and brushed it out of his face, pressing his fingertips against his scalp. It ached from all those hours of pure madness. After years and years of working there, it still didn't become any less of it.

"Mrs. Starling", Settrigh plainly said and his mother mimicked a mute "ah".

"That woman is a malicious beast."

She swung her spoon around and shook her head: "Dementia shows one's true colours."

Settrigh only nodded. He was busy devouring the stew. He wasn't a bad cook himself - his momma had taught him a lot - although, most of the time, he couldn't tell what exactly she did with her cooking to make it that superb.

He proceeded to tell her how good it tasted and she grinned and pinched his arm.

"It better do", she playfully replied, "Let's hope that  the  new neighbour thinks the same. Such a slender boy."

Settrigh raised an eyebrow as he paused. He hadn't heard anything about a new neighbour. But as his mother was working only part-time and always participating in the apartment building's latest gossip he was hardly surprised that she knew before anyone else did.

"New neighbour?"

She made a small gesture with her hand: "Didn't I mention? I thought I did - Anyways, a very young man, probably younger than you. He's moving in next door. You should have seen that poor boy! You  would  think he's never been properly fed. I think we should bake him a pie as a welcome gift."

She continued about which flavour would be the most suitable one and ended up ordering Settrigh to pay him a visit the next day to ask. Or better on Monday as he was probably tired from moving and dragging.

Settrigh couldn't help but laugh quietly. His momma always tried to make things easier and better for everyone around her,  wanted  to help out where she could even if it meant having less time to herself. It was what made her happiest so Settrigh never questioned it. He thought of it as a very generous and fulfilling lifestyle. And because she just got along with everyone she never had to worry about being alone.

As she had been the only person to look up to all his life, he wanted to be like her. Even more so since he thought that his dad had to be the entire opposite of her. If he could just follow her steps of being this caring and _good_ human being, there would be no reason to ever doubt himself. He thought that it had taken him a bit too long to realize all of those things.

They ate up and Settrigh helped her with the dishes. He stood there, drying everything she handed him, and imitated the insults he had heard today. She was laughing and spluttering water everywhere with her excited hands. They wound up quickly. Settrigh leaned down to let her give him a peck and wished her a goodnight.

After a quick shower, Settrigh ended up sitting upright on his bed. When he had turned 18, he had bought himself a larger one that - theoretically - had the capacity for two people. It wasn't as though Settrigh had been in love let alone in a relationship at that point. He had fallen for people in his life whereas none of the relationships he had had could be called a proper one. But he wanted to know that, in case he found someone, he would be able to fall asleep next to them and wake up the same way.

Settrigh would unquestionably call himself cheesy but never in front of someone else. He liked cheesy romance novels, liked curling up in front of the TV to watch people fall in love and he especially liked listening to the elderly people talking about their past lovers and marriages. He even liked the thought of having a love like his momma (Just with someone who wasn't like his pop). He had a secret drawer with love letters that he had written as a boy and romantic books that he had bought during his teenage years. Not even his momma knew of any of those. In a way, it felt wrong to like those things.

He remembered that he had borrowed a book from a former classmate of his. "The Notebook". Settrigh had memorized the name because the book had made him cry in the boy's bathroom in 5th grade. Back then, he hadn't been able to actually understand all of it but the love of the main characters had felt so real to him. Some of the boys had found out about him reading a novel like that and they had laughed at and made fun of him. When Settrigh had started a brawl and his mother had asked him why he had been scared of telling her. Until that day, she still had no idea that it had been about a book those boys had declared unfitting for a male.

Settrigh was smart. Usually, he was smart enough to differentiate whose opinion mattered and whose didn't. But it had never entirely left him how they had pointed their fingers at him and told him that only girls liked such stuff. In his child's mind, he had never been angrier about something, wanting to be the strongest of them all if only for his mother.

He knew that the people around him were still the exact same and that he was confident in himself but not confident enough to bare his deep-seated likes and desires in front of someone who wasn't deserving of it. Settrigh thought that the least people were.

3

The next morning, Settrigh woke up early and with a jolting pain in his neck from sleeping with his head tilted. He didn't remember what he had thought about, if he had thought at all, but at some point, he must have fallen asleep still sitting. A quick look at his phone affirmed his assumption. It was only 7 am. He groaned quietly to himself and dragged the blanket up to his chin, squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for the sleepiness to come back. He had come to appreciate his free days more than anything. He usually used the time to help in the household or watch cheesy movies on Netflix. What he enjoyed most, however, was sleeping in. But no matter how long he wound and wriggled around, he couldn't fall back asleep. He saw that as a sign that he simply wasn't supposed to get any more sleep than usual.

He used that little extra time awake to watch some horrid porn and get off. Later he stood up to get cleaned up and stretch. Only dressed in his underwear, he snuck into the kitchen, munched some of the leftover baguette and eyed the full trash bag that was resting against a counter. It seemed to scream at him. _Carry me outside_. Settrigh sighed. If he was already awake so early, he might as well put himself to use. He could laze around later.

He slipped into some sweatpants and a loose shirt and tried his best not to wake his momma with the sounds his slippers made against the floor. Carefully, he stepped outside into the hallway. The staircase was heavy with darkness and silence. It had to be only him awake, Settrigh thought. Obviously. Who would voluntarily wake up at 7 in the morning on a Sunday?

He carried the trash bag with ease and made it disappear in the depths of the container outside the building. He shuffled back inside hurriedly. March was still freezing cold without any sun. He had just lifted his gaze from his toes that were wet from the dew moistening the grass around the entrance when he suddenly noticed movement in the dark. Settrigh squinted his eyes and carefully approached the shadow standing at the elevator. Only as he got closer he noticed a box on the floor next to the man. He supposed it was a man. His shoulders were fairly broad despite the lean frame they were built on.

The flopping of Settrigh's slappers made him turn around eventually, not without startling just a tad. His shoulders had twitched at the unexpected sound. Settrigh instantly lifted his arms defensively and tried to grin not too awkwardly.

"Just me", he muttered as though they knew each other.

Now that they were facing each other, Settrigh could tell that he had been right. It was a man. A young one at that with soft and slim features and tousled, black hair covering most of his face. It seemed to bother him because he pursed his lips - Settrigh's eyes fell on them and he noticed how his cupid bow glistened in the dimness - and attempted to blow them out of his face before one of his hands quickly got the job done.

Although it was dark, Settrigh could tell that he was pretty. And tired. But mostly pretty. Very much so. From all those movies Settrigh had watched and all the novels he had read he knew that some people just had the ability to stir something deep inside one. That with the first locking of gazes there was that certain sensation in someone's belly or fingertips. A soft tingle, a mushy, intangible attraction to one's aura, to their way of just standing there and looking back.

Settrigh thought that it was supposed to feel wrong to just stare at the man like that after creepily sneaking up to him in sweatpants and cheap house slippers (Whereas - to his defence - it hadn't been his intention to approach the stranger like that) but it didn't. Perhaps he had watched too many movies and read too many novels, however, he thought there was something ethereal about the figure standing in front of him.

He still managed to avert his eyes before it became too awkward. Once he did, his gaze fell onto the box. He deciphered the writing on it a moment later. "Kitchen". It took him one, two more seconds to finally put two and two together. A slender boy with a box in front of the evil elevator without any light. The new neighbour. His nose twitched at his own inattentiveness and he quickly leaned forward to reach the light switch attached directly next to the elevator.

He genuinely tried to tear his eyes off the young man when he turned on the light because he gawkily came too close for comfort when he did so but the boy didn't flinch away.

"Thought you might need that."

Settrigh wanted to punch himself. Really hard so that it really hurt. There he was, his mother always praising his social skills, being the most awkward person to have ever talked to a pretty man  \-  no, to have ever existed. He could talk. Talk for hours on end but as soon as he felt just the tiniest hint of attraction to someone, his mind went blank. What left his mouth once that happened was reason enough to never want to leave his room again. He probably wouldn't even care as much if it was just someone random but it was their new neighbour. Next-door neighbour. Their really _pretty_ next-door neighbour. And yet he was making a fool of himself. Great, Settrigh.

Another moment of silence followed. Then the newcomer, fingertips pressed against the box on the floor, hummed almost thankfully and nodded in Settrigh's direction. He probably wasn't someone to talk a lot. Or he was just shy or scared away by Settrigh's truly embarrassing approach. The stranger had to regret moving here already.

Settrigh's hands suddenly felt awkward, just dangling on his sides. He needed to move them. He ended up crossing his arms in front of his chest, his lips parted in an attempt to fix something that had never even had a shape, to begin with.

"You're the new neighbour?", Settrigh eventually half asked, half stated.

The stranger raised an eyebrow at his words. He probably wondered how Settrigh would know unless he was some weird dude always lurking in dark corners and watching new people come and go. Not that he was. The man shouldn't think that of him.

So he added: "My ma told me."

His expression was clearing up in some sort of realization. Settrigh could tell by his brows arching just a bit and his lips parting in a quiet "oh".

"The son", were the first words Settrigh heard from his new neighbour, "She mentioned you."

Settrigh couldn't tell what exactly he was trying to convey by the way he spoke but he noticed how gentle and careful his voice was. As though he had the deep-seated fear of each and every one of his words mysteriously turning into daggers the moment they came out of his mouth and only by choosing them wisely, he could keep them from harming the ones around him. It was a sudden, unexpected thought Settrigh had and maybe he was just too tired and too captured by his pale skin and his glistening cupid bow and those dark strands falling back into his face whenever his expression changed. But he thought that in a way, by how his face moved and how he emphasized the words he spoke, if Settrigh got to know him just a bit, he could see him, _read_ him.

Cheesy, Settrigh also thought. He had said five words. _Don't get ahead of yourself_ , he told himself. Five words that could have been directed at anyone else. Nothing to read, nothing to interpret, nothing to jump to any weird conclusions and assumptions about the man.

"Hope she only said good things", Settrigh laughed lightly and clumsily.

There was something like a flash of a grin striking the stranger's face and Settrigh felt his chest tighten with the want to make him properly grin.

So he cleared his throat and said: "I'm Settrigh - _the son_ \- but call me Sett."

And because Settrigh was so so cheesy and thought that shaking his hand would definitely be appropriate, he struck out his own and directed his gaze at it. The stranger's eyes followed. Then they travelled up into Settrigh's face for the first time that morning. Settrigh looked back, not directly into his eyes, but at his nose and tried to smile. More or less. In a more appropriate way than shaking the stranger's hand was.

The man seemed to hesitate before he wrapped his fingers around Settrigh's hand. His digits were filigree and a little boney. They felt tiny compared to Settrigh's large ones, shaped by work. He couldn't help but keep his eyes laced on their flabby grip. Blinked and looked back up to see the new neighbour's mind working.

What he eventually came up with was: "Aphelios. Nice to meet you, Settr-"

And as Settrigh really didn't want Aphelios to call him by his full name like only his mother and some of the women in the retirement home did, he pursed his lips in a pleading manner. He had to look stupid but there was that flashing grin again and he thought that he didn't mind making even more of a fool of himself if it made Aphelios grin just a tad.

"-Sett."

With that, Sett properly shook Aphelios' hand and he thought that it now was even appropriate to grin a little more: "Nice to meet ya, too."

At the back of his mind, he reminded himself to finally let go of the hold he had onto Aphelios' fingers and he eventually did.

After that, he said with a nod at the elevator: "You were gon' take that? Probably shouldn't if ya value your life."

Sett noticed how Aphelios squinted his eyes, his brows and the corners of his mouth twitching in the same manner as earlier.

"Yesterday, it seemed pretty fine to me."

Sett let out a knowing, feigned theatrical hum and shrugged: "That's what I thought. He's tryna lure outsiders in like that."

Aphelios' nose twitched and he stared at Sett, then his box, with furrowed brows. He ended up shrugging, pressed the elevator button and the light switch - Sett hadn't noticed the bulb turning off - along with it, bent down to pick up the box and said: "I will survive."

"Sure ya will", Sett said with a light snort and ended up burying his dangling hands in the pockets of his sweatpants.

He thought about saying something like "I probably shouldn't let you take that risk on your own" and he hated the idea, whereas he still ended up voicing it.

Aphelios' eyes widened for a split second and Sett lifted one of his hands immediately to waddle it clumsily in front of his chest.

"Just thought ya might need some help", he shrugged, licked his lip - It had got dry for some reason - and shook his head, "My ma's gon' drop in on ya anyway, so if ya change your mind."

Sett had stumbled over his words and was now just awkwardly waving Aphelios goodbye as the elevator arrived. His new neighbour just looked at him, dumbfounded. He saw him blinking and searching for words that he eventually substituted by simply nodding and humming. Just like he had done it with Sett's first words. Then Sett hurriedly took the stairs, his gaze falling over his shoulder onto the slim man pushing the box into the lift with his shin. He had to reach the end of the staircase to finally bring himself to stop glancing at him. If the elevator hadn't closed, he probably would have continued.

Sett shook his head at himself and scrunched up his face while running upstairs. He saw the elevator arriving just when he did and he hurriedly pulled his keys out of his pocket, fumbling with the lock and the door that seemed tighter than usual. He pushed his elbow against the wood and rattled the key but the lift already opened its doors.

He blinked at Aphelios with wide eyes, an awkward chuckle falling from his lips as he tapped the door. The man didn't seem too surprised to see him again. He just frowned lightly at Sett literally clinging onto the door as he grabbled for his kitchen box. 

" 's jammed", Sett said in an indefinable tone only for the clicking of the lock to follow.

With that, he pushed it open and disappeared behind it without daring another glance at Aphelios.

4

His momma was sitting at the coffee table with a bowl of cereals and a towel on top of her head. She had been going for her second portion when Sett stepped inside the living room.

"Settrigh, dear, you look like you've seen a ghost", his mother said half-worried, half in a mocking tone.

Sett certainly looked stupid. The shock of just embarrassing himself entirely was still deep-seated and heavy. 7,5 billion people were living on this planet and of all those people that - unfairly and achingly attractive - man had to be moving into their ugly, washy yellow building. Had Sett already mentioned that he was madly and in an absolutely unfair manner attractive? When he blinked he could still see his slender eyes underneath creaseless skin and dim lightning and the twitching of the corners of his mouth. They were tiny flashes of his memory like bats of lashes, split seconds of awareness before his inner eye, reminders of his incompetence. He really wanted them to disappear.

"Hm", Sett made.

Then he added: "Met the neighbour."

He didn't look at his momma when he spoke those words. He was heading towards the oven to grab another chunk of baguette. He considered putting some cheese on it but in case she was to ask him questions he would rather have his mouth stuffed with something that would keep him from giving her a summary of what just happened.

Her eyes lit up at the mention and she tilted her head upwards to watch Sett as he gnawed on his baguette.

"What a handsome young man, isn't he?", she sing-sang and waved her hands.

Sett nodded quietly and hummed around the baguette he had taken a large bite off once he had heard the word "handsome". Better not speak at all.

"A bit shy, though."

"Hm."

"Oh- Did you ask him about which pie flavour's his favourite?"

He shoved the rest of the piece into his mouth and shrugged while shaking his head.

"Only said hi, turned on the light", Sett mumbled with his stuffed mouth.

He could already tell by how his mother's lips parted that she was about to scold him. So he quickly lifted his hands and apologetically shook them.

He swallowed thickly: "Sorry, ma, won't happen again."

And before anything else could follow, he waved in the motion of turning around and leaving the kitchen: "Imma head back."

Sett emphasized his words by nodding the direction of his room and left hurriedly. He was aware that his momma wasn't stupid and that she knew him far too well to not notice that he unmistakably tried to avoid their conversation but he'd rather have a few hours of beating himself up and stomaching it properly before he had to face Aphelios and his talks about him with his mother again.

The free day passed quickly. He helped cook late lunch at 4 pm, ate with his mother and did the dishes by himself so that she could take an afternoon nap that she so desperately needed as she was getting _old_ , she claimed. Sett had laughed and agreed and earned a soft nudge of her elbow against his ribs.

At the  door frame , she had stilled and called Sett's name. Once he had been looking, she had told him to go and ask Aphelios about how his move went and, of course, his preferred pie flavour. And because Sett was a determined young man but had just never been able to say no to his momma, he had promised yes.

5

Sett didn't have the time nor the mind to stop by at Aphelios' flat until Tuesday evening. The day before he had glanced at the door with the new nameplate - "Akatsuki" - just below the doorbell whenever he had walked past but he had either been on his way to work or training and the mere thought of standing in front of him again made his mind stir. He knew he was just avoiding the inevitable. Sooner or later, his mother would invite Aphelios over, if Sett wanted or not, and then he might even become a regular visitor, in the - Sett prayed that it was unlike - case that the young man would actually accept her offer.

Then he got home from work with his backpack already halfway ridden off his shoulder when he remembered how his momma had reminded him of their new neighbour and told him that he should quit being a coward and he let it slide down. It made a soft thud that echoed through the silence of the hallway and Sett flinched slightly. He honestly had to get a grip on himself. It was a little like stepping into the ring, facing his opponent and not running away despite the crippling nervousness always gnawing at him. He could take hits and deal them so how scary and ominous could approaching Aphelios again really be?

He didn't make a big deal out of ringing the bell, simply pressed the button and stood tall - and definitely, absolutely not nervous - in front of the door. His ears perked up at the sound of soft footsteps approaching and looked Aphelios in the face when he opened up.

The neighbour's expression was hard to read. Sett deemed to see the slight arching of his brows but whenever he was faced with people in frightening or new situations, he could never see their grimaces, therefore, he wasn't sure. He wasn't even sure about what to say or how to offer pie when there was nothing that in any way connected them except for moist wood and pale yellow.

He pressed out a "hi" with a swift wave of his hand and cleared his throat.

Aphelios eyed him from his maybe 5" 7' point of view. He had to tilt his head just a tad to look into Sett's face and Sett found it endearing in a way one would find kittens yawning endearing. He thought that Aphelios was endearing generally speaking. With his soft lips and just as soft orbs and soft-looking hair. Sett assumed that his parents had to be somewhat Asian with his creaseless eyes and how silky his black strands shone in the light of his flat's hallway illuminating him from behind his spot, one hand still holding onto the door frame.

"Hi", Aphelios replied.

Sett tried to keep his eyes from wandering but Aphelios looked oh so endearing and he was just too good at making things even more uncomfortable for himself. He glanced at his sweatpants, the loose sweater revealing his pale collarbones and a silver chain glistening from where the fabric exposed his neck. There was a blue spot on his left cheek that Sett quickly recognized as ink in the way it was stroked across his skin. His fingers were stained as well. Sett wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for the brightness of his skin as he hadn't bothered to turn on the lights of the stairwell.

He thought about asking how things were going and whether he wanted to come over because they had some baguette left but a petite man like Aphelios would have to fear being axe-murdered by someone broadly built like Sett if he were to enter his flat so he discarded the idea quickly. He was so desperately searching for the right words that it was quiet for what felt like an eternity but were, realistically seen, only two seconds that were still enough time for Aphelios' brows to travel up his forehead slightly which Sett still caught.

"My ma", he quickly shot, because if he was mentioning her Aphelios might think the interest wasn't mutual whereas he didn't even know if that was a good thing but, Lord in heaven, he had to start somewhere, "wants to know what pie flavour ya like."

Sett cleared his throat again and crossed his arms. Those stupid things were always dangling as though they had nothing better to do. Silly looking arms.

Aphelios shifted on his feet and angled his head slightly: "Pie?"

"Y'know, she bakes", Sett chuckles in a nervous manner, "And she's been all about how ya're so slim, wan's to pep ya up."

He didn't know what it was about his dialect just seriously getting the best of him whenever he was talking to Aphelios and the speed at which those words left his mouth going beyond what was even remotely adequate. He spoke like a drug dealer, worried about being caught so he tripped over his words in hopes his client would understand and reply just as quickly and blurry.

Aphelios seemed to think for a moment because he hummed and pressed his lips together. His gaze had been on Sett for a moment only but when he had noticed Sett looking back at him, he had averted it within a split second. He had been focusing on the stone floor and the old, scratchy foot mat the tip of Sett's shoes graced ever since.

"She doesn't have to", Aphelios eventually said and Sett, for some reason, had assumed that their new neighbour would be rather modest.

He remembered the thought he had had during their first encounter, that Aphelios spoke like he was scared of inflicting harm. That he chose words in a careful and thoughtful manner as he was aware of the pain they could cause. Sett had found that sudden notion stupid and hasty but now that Aphelios' hand was hugging the doorframe and he was shifting from one foot to another and silencing whenever Sett did and silenced for a little longer even when Sett had broken through it he deemed it to be true.

Sett licked his lip and shrugged: "I know. But it makes her happy, ya know? She wants you to feel welcome."

"And I do, too."

Sett had said those words a little carelessly, nearly sloppily, with one of his crossed arms entangling itself and a hand finding a spot in his hair to scratch. He glanced at Aphelios' face whose brows and corners of his mouth twitched in something to say, to _feel_.

"I mean", Sett huffed and helplessly waved his hands because his head wasn't itchy and his chest felt too tight to have their weight against it any longer, "if I didn't have my ma- things would be lonely, ya know? And unless ya hiding someone in there, ya must be a li'l lonely, too."

Sett had dared to keep his eyes trained on Aphelios until his slip and was now looking at the name sign below the bell so he could only hear the man's clothes shifting as he did and the sound his lips made when he parted them. He side-eyed his face. The ink was prominent next to the crease his mouth made. A hinted smile. A tiny one. Maybe it was just how his mouth skewed when he swallowed. No, it was a smile.

"I", Aphelios' eyes flickered around, "guess I like pear."

6

Sett's mother was more than content with the new information her son delivered her later that evening. She was writing her grocery list during dinner and raising her eyebrows at Sett mentioning Aphelios quietly without being able to look her in the eye. He was aware of how utterly obvious he was about finding Aphelios pretty and lovely with his flickering gazes and gentle words. However, he wouldn't say it out loud because he feared his mother would otherwise make it obvious to everyone around them - even more than Sett himself did already. She wasn't good at keeping things to herself, especially when they excited her. Her son being interested in someone definitely did excite her.

The next day, Sett came home to the sweet smell of pie still lingering in the air. The pie was cooling on a wire rack and his momma was taking a nap. Its top was decorated with stars, caramelized pear peeking through the gaps. It looked lovely and Sett could feel his mouth watering. As he stepped closer, he noticed the little note his mother had placed right next to the rack.

"Keep your fingers away from that pie, Settrigh!"

He snorted lightly and toyed with the idea to throw away the piece of paper and indulge in that pie, pretending there hadn't been any memo. But that pie was for Aphelios. His mother must have put a lot of effort into the decorations, probably to leave a good impression, and he would be the last one to destroy any of her hard work.

Sett ate some of the leftovers of yesterday's dinner and watched a series on Netflix to calm down from his workday until his momma knocked at his door. She asked him to go and invite Aphelios over to have some pie and Sett said it was too late to _invite_ someone over whereat she huffed and claimed that they weren't some shady murderers after all.

"Why don't ya invite him yourself then", Sett retorted with a low hum.

His mother was still standing in the doorframe to his room and eventually pressed her palms against her hips, glaring at her son: "I gave birth to you, Settrigh. You don't really think anything slips my attention, do you?"

At that, Sett stilled. She couldn't possibly refer to Sett's totally obvious non-obviousness about his soft spot for their new neighbour. She was smart and attentive but that came close to witchery, Sett decided. His mother had to be a witch, a fortune teller or something. He parted his lips quickly and shrugged.

"Don't know what ya're talkin' about."

His momma threw her hands and rolled her eyes in that motherly manner only mothers used when they knew they had hit the bull's eye with their assumptions and subtle and yet not so - unquestionably not - subtle hints and nudges.

"At least", she said already halfway in the hallway, "get a piece over there!"

Sett stared at the widely open door and scrunched up his nose in a discontent huff. He could hear his momma turning on the TV in the living room. She wouldn't close that door anymore. And she also wouldn't accept any excuses about delivering the pie to Aphelios. Ridiculous. He was 22 and paying part of the rent. Why was he even still putting up with her witchcraft and not-closing of doors?

He loved his mother dearly and everything in his life was thanks to her, but he disliked her ability to read him greatly. He disliked people addressing his emotions before he had even processed them even more. His mother was good at both, mostly because she didn't actually understand Sett's hesitance regarding feelings.

It wasn't as though Sett thought they were a sign of weakness or any of that casual, typical toxic masculinity stuff. He acknowledged his emotions as a very human yet very bothersome part of life. His difficulty was putting them into words, calling them by their name when it was anything else than anger or sadness. He wasn't sure why exactly he sometimes was feeling some type of way and he couldn't pinpoint the things running through his mind and making his blood pulse, couldn't come up with the right explanations and sentences to let others know what he was experiencing. It surprised him at times, considering how invested he was in romance novels and movies. However, they had never been able to make him more sure about what he felt himself. Therefore, it usually took him a while to come to terms with his emotions and before that had happened, one was wise to not try to interfere and make assumptions.

Sett had been, in fact, quite busy sparing Aphelios some of his midday and late-night thoughts and remembering the picture he had of him inside his memory of slender arms and broad shoulders and that loose sweater with the chain , its pendant he hadn't been able to see. He had spared thoughts about his gentle voice and gentle words and he had spared thoughts about his aura that, for whatever ridiculous reason, never failed to make Sett absurdly nervous. He thought that Aphelios probably was utterly annoyed by him and his dialect and his blurry words. That thought made Sett's chest feel a little tight. Just a bit. He wouldn't mind it if Aphelios were to look forward to passing each other in the hallway or Sett ringing and standing and fumbling at his door with pie or stupid questions and words. He really wouldn't.

But those were things he wasn't quite content with yet. Sett had been in love before, had fallen for a highschool friend of five years but she had been in a relationship and the first boy he had fallen for had been straight and madly in love with their  drama  teacher. He had dated and tried things out, had had his first time when he had been 16 and so on. He wasn't inexperienced and yet, he had never felt that way about someone before. He thought it was cheesy,  and  was reminded of every other novel expressing meeting _their one_ as something magical and fateful, something you could pinpoint the moment it happened. Sett liked and  believed  in the idea of romance and sillily falling in love but he didn't believe in _the ones_ and he didn't believe in love at first sight.

Maybe attraction at first sight. Maybe just a gnawing and childlike urge to be close to someone's warmth and aura, stemming from the first locking of gazes and the first brushing of fingertips, enough to spark that tiny flame inside someone's belly until it was wilding and raging and becoming that fiery in-love people missed once it had settled down and turned into deep-seated and subtle love.

Whatever it was, Sett thought that it was worthless considering that he didn't even know even the slightest bit about Aphelios and that maybe he was the axe-murderer and not him. He thought that that was why his mother's words and her assumption had struck him the way they had. He didn't want to acknowledge something that probably wasn't real anyway.

He still got up from his bed and got somewhat properly dressed again, dove into the kitchen without really looking at his mother to get a piece of pie and then disappeared into the hallway. His house slippers made their usual flopping sounds and Sett's ears twitched with every step he took.

Sett was just about to ring the doorbell when he heard steps coming from the other side of the wood, Aphelios' voice quietly stretching from somewhere inside his flat to where Sett was standing.

"Yes" and "no-o" and something with "I would never!" and Sett felt bad for listening, for being able to distinguish his voice that sounded so different from how he had ever heard him speak. There was shuffling and shifting of clothes and sounds of attempts at speaking that were cut off by the ghost voice on, what Sett assumed, the phone. His mind was racing and he thought he should leave and let the pie be pie and Aphelios be Aphelios but then keys were grabbed and a hand was pressed against the door.

Sett widened his eyes and he somewhat had the mind to press the bell in an instant. Maybe then Aphelios wouldn't assume he had been standing here for a few seconds. His heart was racing and he felt like he absolutely needed a sniff of fresh air the moment his neighbour opened the door and stared at him. His eyes were wide and pupils large. He was dressed to go outside, Sett figured, already in a pair of boots and a large jacket engulfing his suddenly very small and fragile looking frame.

They were standing in front of each other. Sett, once again, felt like everything that could possibly leave his mouth would ruin any of those things he wouldn't mind Aphelios feeling and Aphelios looked like a hurt animal, a deer in headlights, sheepish eyes and tightly pressed together lips. It looked painful.

He was holding a phone in the hand not gripping the doorframe and Sett faintly heard the voice. He couldn't tell if it was male or female or if there was more than one but each word that was spit did something to Aphelios' oh so careful expression. Sett thought that he should have turned around, that he probably should have stayed in his room, should have done everything but stand in front of a clearly upset Aphelios with a plate of pie in his large hands and annoying-sounding house slippers. He couldn't have found a worse point in time.

"I have to go", Aphelios eventually muttered and hung up.

His gaze was low just like his head, his entire figure. Twitching brows and fumbling, ink-covered fingers around his phone.

Sett didn't know what to say. He truly didn't. He knew how to react to elderly people suddenly remembering their long-gone husband's death, knew how to handle fights and knew how to deal a blow in the ring. None of those things had prepared him for the foolery of standing in front of Aphelios, endearing and gentle and strange to him Aphelios with his sad eyes and shaky hands. It was laughable to Sett how his mere presence could turn him entirely dumbfounded.

He licked and smacked his lips and eh-ed and hm-ed for a few quick seconds in which he heard Aphelio's phone vibrating before he was able to form a proper sentence: "Sorry for barging in on ya."

Aphelios made a tiny sound at the back of his throat which sounded like an "it's okay" but who was Sett to know. Who was Sett to assume anything about that man? Who was he to see him that fragile and hurt by something Sett knew nothing about? He felt hot, angered by his inability to make anything work, to make Aphelios comfortable the way he and his mother wanted him to be. Had he ever done anything right with him? Probably not. It was time to do so.

"I can come back another time", Sett mindlessly found the right words, "The pie won' run away."

Sett didn't dare to look Aphelios in the face, let alone the eye. He politely looked everywhere but at him so that Aphelios wouldn't feel observed and took a hand from the plate he was carrying to wave goodbye.

His "See ya" was interrupted by Aphelios speaking up.

"Pear?"

He hadn't expected him to say anything and even less for his head to be tilted upwards the next time Sett glanced at him. But there Aphelios was and his pupils were still blown wide and his hands still shaky but he was looking at him and then at the piece of pie in Sett's hands.

"Thp-", Sett stumbled and chuckled lightly, "The pie? Yea."

"Ma made it, wasn't even allowed to try."

Aphelios hummed and nodded lightly. Then he tipped his head the same manner Sett had seen him do it before and the hint of a smile was back on his pale face.

Sett tried his best to grin - appropriately, not too widely - and handed Aphelios the plate. The man made his phone - it was still sounding quietly but Aphelios hadn't thrown a single glance at it ever since he had hung up - disappear in the pocket of his jacket so that he could take it. His eyes instantly went to study the piece further. His jaw loosened up a tad as he brought it up to his face and softly inhaled the scent.

"Thanks."

His voice had gone back to its caution and tenderness. Sett was relieved. He had feared the silence and the awkwardness of him interrupting the - obviously - very upsetting call Aphelios had had but he couldn't have known. Aphelios knew that. He didn't fault Sett for the moment he had chosen , nor did he fault him for his slurring and nervous laughter. He didn't do any of those things Sett feared to cause him to do. The realization hit him, suddenly and forcefully, and he felt stupid. Really stupid - and presumptuous. For assuming Aphelios' feelings. He disliked it when others did it to him and yet he doubted that someone as endearing as Aphelios could see him in any other light than the one of a big fool.

It surprised him how his confidence left him, bare and naked, exposed in front of whoever seemed too good to stay.

"You goin' for a walk?", Sett asked after a smiled hum, pushing his thoughts and his sudden lack of courage to the back of his mind.

Aphelios looked down at himself as though he was confused as to how Sett would know and eventually parted his lips in a silent "ah".

Then he shook his head no: "Not anymore."

He raised his hand with the plate, pointed at the pie with a nod. Sett saw the corners of his mouth jerk and chuckled in relief that the pie seemed to lift his mood somehow.

"It's late anyway", Sett hummed, "If you want another piece, I got a day off tomorrow. Just- ring, ya know?"

Sett didn't think that Aphelios would stop by at their flat but he also didn't think that Aphelios would thank him again and use _his_ name that time, so he was in a splendid and hopeful mood when he bounced back to the other side of the hallway after seeing his neighbour off properly and grinning at him until he had closed the door slowly.

He put the pie in the freezer, kissed his momma goodnight and set his alarm to a humane time. 9 am. He didn't want to sleep in too long, just in case - in the very  unlikely  case - that Aphelios were to pick up more of the pie.

7

Aphelios actually did come by at 3 in the afternoon. Sett's mother was - luckily - still at work and Sett had been preparing dinner and chatting with some of his co-workers for most of the day. He had been lazily laying on the couch and listening to a voice note when the bell rang. As his momma had not forgotten her keys and he couldn't recall a baking dish having been lent to any of their neighbours, it had to be Aphelios.

Sett nearly tripped over the side table and only his big hand stemming against the doorframe kept him from crashing into it as he jumped up and hurried toward the door. Aphelios had seen him in his casual at-home clothing before so he deemed it fine to open up to him like that.

Quick fingers running through his hair, a tuck at his shirt, then he gripped the handle and grinned at Aphelios who was standing there with the plate he had given him the day before and his head tilted. Sett greeted him as he pursed his lips and tried to get his hair out of his face and Sett chuckling took the plate from him so that he could use his hands.

"Hi", Aphelios mumbled and, "thanks"

He had tucked his long hair behind his ear and Sett could now see both of his eyes glancing up at his face and quickly somewhere else again. Seeing Aphelios in some loose jeans and a tucked-in turtleneck was new as he had only witnessed him in more homely clothing before. But it suited him. He looked pretty and lean in what he was wearing, Sett thought.

Sett let his gaze wander back to his averted eyes and his shining cupid's bow and the creases around his mouth as Aphelios parted his lips and searched for words he could dare to speak.

"The pie was- very good", he eventually said and nodded.

His eyes darted back to Sett and he looked back at him for a moment, swiftly glancing at the side and back and noticing Aphelios' gaze flickering along with his.

"So you've come to eat more?", Sett asked as he raised an eyebrow and he knew Aphelios saw the motion.

The man pressed his lips together and hummed: "If it's alright."

Sett pushed the door open some more so that Aphelios could easily peek inside their flat. He wasn't sure if it was okay to let Aphelios in, not because he feared his mother might mind but because he feared Aphelios might feel obliged to do it. They were strangers after all who had been nice to him without any apparent reason, none other than mere humanity, and being nice, too, in all the ways one was offered to be nice in return might feel like an obligation.

"If you don't think I'm gonna murder ya with an axe", Sett returned jokingly but still giving Aphelios the chance to voice any possible doubts he might have.

But Aphelios simple grinned - his mouth distorted unevenly on both sides and his eyes creased slightly, his teeth flashing in between those pink-ish lips and Sett had doubted he would ever see that notion, ever see him amused by something that he said and sure about something that he himself said and wanted - and muttered mockingly: "Please."

_You couldn't_ , he seemed to tease. Sett's own grin widened and he eventually let Aphelios inside, the man cocking his head swiftly to examine the interior. Most of it had been his momma's doing. A cluster of framed pictures of a baby and toddler Sett up until his graduation. Plastic plants gracing the wardrobe and otherwise empty corner. Neatly arranged shoes and jackets assorted by the thickness of the fabric.

Aphelios' nose twitched subtly as he glanced at the pictures of Sett, mostly half-naked as he had always been a little bare-bum and things didn't change when he had started boxing. There also was a picture of him in the ring with a medal in his one hand and his other hand holding the one of his opponent. It had been a friend of his who had been in it for longer than Sett. That victory had been the first one he had been that proud of.

Sett noticed that Aphelios' eyes had followed his own and he smacked his lips while running a hand through his hair.

"Yeah, I was a handsome kid", he said in a sarcastic tone, "Look at all those muscles."

With his grinned words he pointed at his lean, child-like body and Aphelios let out a tiny sound Sett deemed to be a snort. It struck him that Aphelios seemed to be in a good mood today. He was still quiet and spoke rarely - and if he did , with caution - but he grinned and even _snorted_ at the stupid things Sett said and it made him smile so widely that his cheeks hurt already by the time they reached the kitchen.

There they sat down at the coffee table, facing one another, and ate pie. They sat there and Sett made cheeky and cheesy comments and Aphelios rolled his eyes and snorted and teased him just a little bit. It wasn't the type of teasing that left you gasping and clutching your chest in pain at their harsh words but the one that made Sett think, once again, that Aphelios was just utterly and absolutely endearing.

He found himself staring at him more often than not and only averted his eyes when Aphelios caught him. His neighbour would then quickly look down and grab a piece of pie to cover up his slight embarrassment about being looked at. Sett still liked looking at him. He thought Aphelios deserved having doe eyes on him and being told things that made him react the way he did. So subtly amused and sarcastic, so so subtly with care and yet genuine as he warmed up.

Sett felt somewhat proud of seeing Aphelios that way as they were neighbours but mostly strangers and there wasn't a lot that connected them but if he just invited him to eat pie a little more often and gave him those large grins, he would find out who Aphelios was. What excited him and what he was passionate about. He feared to ask directly and an hour had passed that they had spent with the TV quietly in the background and the pie nearly gone until Sett had the courage to dig a little further.

What he was doing for a living, Sett asked. And Aphelios said he was majoring in medicine which was financed by his parents. Then Sett said that it was a heavy subject and Aphelios agreed. His eyes had sunken a bit again and Sett couldn't tell if it had been because of his question or just a general change in his mood.

So he didn't ask him anything for a few minutes in which he told him about the retirement home he was working at. He told Aphelios about Mrs. Black and Starling and all the other crazy figures he cared for and Aphelios even _giggled_ at the images Sett gave him.

"So I told him that if he wanna throw a punch, he better hit it", Sett huffed and Aphelios snorted.

"And you know how to hit one?"

There he was at it again, teasing Sett, questioning him subtly to make him glare at him and say that he was one of the best at throwing punches and that he had been doing it for years now.

"I was sorta an angry li'l boy", Sett told Aphelios with carelessly and scratched his head.

He said that boxing had made him a better man and Aphelios nodded and smiled lightly. In response to the question of what Aphelios liked to do, he stilled. Sett feared he might have struck a nerve but the man just looked down at his hands for a moment before he returned Sett's glance.

"I like taking walks."

It wasn't the only thing he liked doing but Sett only figured out a while later. It was something Aphelios rarely told people. It didn't fit into who he wanted to be, into who his parents wanted him to be, and he had long decided to discard most of it. Most of who Aphelios was and taken on what had been Alune.

The first time Sett heard the name of his sister was a week later.

8

Aphelios had left that day before Sett's mother had arrived with the leftovers of the pie in some foil. He came to thank Sett's mother the following day when Sett was at work and he saw him again at the weekend. His momma had invited him for lunch and cake in the afternoon and Aphelios had smiled and snorted even more. It had taken him a bit but Sett's mother was just too good at making people feel at home. Sett even brought Aphelios back to his apartment door like the gentleman he was and Aphelios rolled his eyes but gave him a warm smile before disappearing inside.

Sett had been in a splendid mood and bubbling over with joyful grins and slurred words in his dialect that his momma had noticed instantly. She had refrained from mentioning it that time, however, for which Sett had been incredibly grateful whereas it hadn't slipped from his attention how his mother would sometimes send him to provide Aphelios with some dinner or snacks.

Friday of the following week, Aphelios - yes, Aphelios and the fact that it had been him had made Sett nearly break his jaw while grinning - had suggested a walk and Sett had eagerly agreed. It was a warm March Friday, the last one of the month, and Sett liked the loose shirt on Aphelios. His collarbones were glistening with paleness in the sun and his gaze fell onto his chain whenever he glanced at him from where he was walking next to the smaller man.

Aphelios was busy blowing his hair out of his face when Sett carefully tucked it behind his ear the way Aphelios usually did it himself. He stilled for just a moment, as though he had stumbled, subtly, and tilted his head, daring to look up at Sett only to then quickly fixate the ground again.

Then Sett asked: "What's the pendant?"

His neighbour furrowed his brows in a questioning manner until Sett's pointing finger at his chain clarified. Aphelios carefully pulled the rest of the necklace from below his shirt's collar to reveal the sun pendant. It was a filigree design, almost feminine, and Sett couldn't help but wonder if it had been a gift to him from someone.

He worded his question awkwardly and the corners of Aphelios' mouth twitched - Sett couldn't tell in what manner. Next, he pressed his lips together and creased his eyes as though he was searching for the right words to say. He had been more careless before, Sett noticed.

Sett was about to tell him that he was entirely free not to answer his question as Aphelios replied: "It belonged to my sister."

At a blow, Sett realized that they hadn't actually talked about anything family-related except for his own pa, mostly because there had been so many other things Sett had rather asked him so far. But as Aphelios had not backed off from his question, he took that as a sign that he could continue. For a bit, at least.

"You got a sis?"

"Yeah."

"Ya're probably the older brother, huh? Ya strike me as one", Sett tried to joke softly.

He watched Aphelios closely since he felt as though it was a difficult, bumpy topic, guiding him through a minefield that forced him to tiptoe around each and every bomb buried beneath the ground. The man was simply staring ahead of him until he stood still. He sighed, shook his head and sighed again.

"My sister died of pancreatic cancer when she was 15. It was diagnosed when we were ten and she was fine for a bit but then she wasn't", Aphelios heaved out a breath, as though he was upset, "This was supposed to be the present for Alune's 16th birthday. Things didn't work out. Yeah."

Sett froze in his motion and blankly stared at Aphelios. His mind was processing things at high speed and yet not quickly enough for him to grasp all of it. Cancer was the first thing his mind recognized as something horrible. Five years of unsuccessful treatment was the next one. His next realization was that Alune had been Aphelios' twin and that he was carrying the last thing that had ever been given to her around every single day. He had never seen Aphelios without the chain and he no longer wondered why.

He thought about putting a hand on Aphelios' shoulder, thought about saying he was sorry, all those generic actions and words that meant nothing in the end. He was hesitating and fumbling with his thoughts for another moment until he shifted in front of Aphelios and placed one of his big hands on Aphelios' head, fingertips softly nudging his black strands that had already fallen back into his face by then.

Sett looked in Aphelios' face with his widened eyes and slightly parted lips as Sett kept his hand there and mumbled: "It's a really pretty necklace."

9

Sett couldn't stop thinking about how much Aphelios' expression at that moment had reminded him of the time he had caught him on that call. How vulnerable and exposed and _sad_ he had looked. Aphelios probably hadn't noticed himself but Sett had felt the slight pressure of his head leaning into the warm touch and he had swiftly brushed his locks out of his face once more before he had taken him to a bench and started with a few funny anecdotes from his childhood as they never failed to make Aphelios' face twitch with even the slightest bit of amusement.

He couldn't stop thinking about how it had been the longest he had heard Aphelios talk and how he was being reminded of and feeling the gaps his sister's death had left  in his life every single day. Some night the following week he thought, half-asleep, that he wanted to give Aphelios another necklace. One that had nothing to do with his sister. One that was for him only. But Sett didn't just want to go over to his place and give it to him, randomly and out of nowhere.

That was when he made the decision to ask Aphelios on a date.

He quarrelled with the idea for a bit whereas he undeniably and irrevocably was falling for their new neighbour and how he puckered his lips to blow his hair out of the way, how he teased without to harm and how his eyes twitched to look Sett in the face whenever he deemed it safe only to then shyly glance anywhere but at him.

When he came home some Saturday to Aphelios and his momma standing in the kitchen and cooking and laughing together and his chest felt tight with all of those things he was feeling, he thought he had to do it for sure.

He stroked Aphelios' back softly that evening and Aphelios didn't flinch away, instead glimpsed at him and Sett had to stop himself from gulping. He had rarely touched Aphelios until then. His hand a few times, his hair and once his cheek and each time he had found breathing difficult. He would be lying if he said he didn't want to touch him whenever he saw him but Sett was a gentleman and knew what was appropriate. Only because Aphelios was eating at their place every other day, it didn't mean he could just throw himself at the man - although he definitely wouldn't mind it if Aphelios asked him to.

After dinner and doing the dishes together and talking excitedly, Sett got into his slippers and followed Aphelios out of their flat into the hallway. Aphelios was having a good day and Sett couldn't help but stare at his subtle smile from the side all the way to Aphelios' apartment.

Then they stood still and Sett parted his lips, awestruck at how Aphelios was daring to look back. Sometimes that man just did little things that Sett hadn't trusted him to do but, in a way, Aphelios was just good at surprising him. With the intensity Sett felt when he was around him, his sudden suggestions of taking walks and his swift moments of courage to look Sett in the eye.

"I wanna take you on date."

And the corners of Aphelios' mouth creased and his cupid bow glistened oh-so temptingly as he said: "Okay. Take me on a date.".


	2. Part II - Lovers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He ran his fingers through his hair and when he brought his hand back down, Aphelios caught his wrist with slender fingers. Sett thought that his digits felt oh so delicate and tempting and that Aphelios looked oh so delicate and tempting. He wanted to lean down and place a kiss on his cupid bow, the revealing corners of his mouth and he almost did."
> 
> Or, Settrigh and Aphelios go on dates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2!!! It is not as long as the first one and the next two chapters won't be either. I hope you still enjoy!  
> I would like to add that this is mostly build-up. The real plot has yet to be revealed. :)  
> My twitter is @chaeyoongsao3 and our lovely Settphel server always welcomes new members: https://discord.gg/Me2sfXV

1

For their first date, Sett had made a reservation in some subtly and not-really but yet fancy enough diner to have lunch at. Aphelios only had a lecture in the morning and Sett had a day off. All plans were upset, however, when one of his co-workers got ill and Sett had to jump in.

He was already on his way to the retirement home when Aphelios sent him a message that he just got out of his lecture. Sett was disappointed and angry but mostly angry that his colleague had to choose that particular day to have a fever or whatever was bothering her enough to ruin Sett's day. He was in a grumpy mood.

Mrs. Black was looking at him with big eyes and asked when she was going to have lunch and that the waiter - Sett - did a really bad job at keeping her entertained and Sett almost growled at her but was interrupted by another elderly woman, her name being Mrs. Clerk, who had started singing an old folk song out of nowhere. This was madness.

But it became a little less of it with Aphelios' next message.

"They have a cafeteria over there, don't they?"

Sett replied hastily yes and Aphelios said he would love nothing more than to have lunch at the expensive cafeteria of the retirement home. Sett had mentioned the really pretty view after all and he just had to see it for himself. Sett knew he was being sarcastic but Aphelios reaffirmed that he really meant it and so they postponed their date to the evening when Sett's shift would end.

He picked Aphelios up from the front desk back in his normal clothing and guided him to the cafeteria adjoining the large building with a subtle hand on the small of his back. Aphelios didn't mention it whereas it made Sett's fingertips tingle with the warmth that was radiating from him. He was looking at the smaller man from the corner of his eye and acknowledged the soft crease of the corners of his mouth with a faint caress of his back. He was feeling hot and Aphelios had to feel it through the fabric of his shirt.

The cafeteria indeed had a pretty view, large windows to the side of an artificial lake behind the apartment building with willows and berry bushes gracing the banks. Sometimes Sett would take the people from the Hub to the lake so that they could sit and stare and wow at the park. Looking at the benches and dancing leaves from a table for two in a quiet corner of the café suddenly didn't feel as inappropriate anymore.

He pulled the chair back for Aphelios and gently pushed it forward as he sat down and Aphelios subtly rolled his eyes at him but he was grinning and Sett thought that Aphelios never minded as much as he rolled his eyes. Then Sett rested his chin on his propped up palm and glanced at Aphelios. He looked pretty in the sunlight. The silver necklace rested on his pale collarbones glistening and his hair looked especially feathery with the colour of the shirt he was wearing. Sett would have loved to reach out and brush it out of his tender face in just as much a tender manner and to hold his cheek in his palm to feel the jolts of his mouth and dips of his head.

Despite all the things Sett thought about Aphelios, despite his confidence to ask him on a date and to look him in the eye when he told him that he would absolutely recommend the strawberry cake they offered here, he was scared of doing more nevertheless, hesitant to do as he craved.

Because Aphelios was so gentle and endearing and Sett feared it might all disappear. Like a tree in autumn, full of colour and empty with the winds that washed over it. He didn't want to be that wind, didn't want to rid Aphelios of his pretty leaves, his beauty in choosing words cautiously and softly and sitting there and glimpsing from the windows to Sett and back. Sett wanted to be the man his momma had raised him to be and he wanted Aphelios to think that he deserved him.

They ended up ordering the strawberry cake and a sandwich that they both shared. And while they ate and some of the elderly people walking past greeted Sett, they talked. Aphelios asked questions about why Sett had become a geriatric nurse, what he had to do and said that he didn't like most old people whereas Sett wondered why.

"My grandparents", Aphelios hummed and Sett could tell by his furrowed brows and twitching mouth that he disliked them, "were very strict."

After a few moments of him pondering and letting his eyes wander from the cake over the table and to Sett's chest, Aphelios eventually added: "Alune wanted to become a doctor. They liked that."

Sett squinted his eyes just a tad and hummed: "I suppose they didn't like what ya wanted to do?"

He remembered that Aphelios had mentioned that he was majoring in medicine, however, as he was referring to Alune's wish and how his grandparents had preferred what she had had in mind for her future, Sett couldn't help but think that Aphelios had had other dreams.

Aphelios shrugged at his words. Stilled. Nodded.

"What did'ya wanna do?"

"Orchestra."

Next, Aphelios changed the topic and Sett knew better than to dig further in his minefield. By now he had learned that Aphelios chose what left his mouth wisely, that he exposed what he was ready to expose and that he grabbed Sett's hand and trains of thoughts when he felt too naked to guide them somewhere else. Sett was okay with that. They were both old enough to know the importance of honesty and baring oneself, bit by bit at an appropriate and steady pace. They were old enough to not want to waste anyone's time with immaturely mysterious words and staying hidden and unknown and so Sett was okay with it.

The sun had already made its departure by the time they left the café and moved alongside each other toward the subway station. Sett had one hand - the one facing the street - buried in the pocket of his jacket with the other one dangling right next to Aphelios'. He felt the breeze of his swiftly swaying arm, his fingertips peeking from the hem of the sleeve. Aphelios had brought the hoodie knowingly that it would get colder, freezing, quickly. It was still spring, after all. 

Sett looked at Aphelios and his bouncing hair and their fingers brushing against each other and he whispered "sorry"s and cleared his throat whenever it happened. Yet, none of them flinched away, took a step to the side to put some distance between their swinging hands. Aphelios stayed close to him and when they sat down inside the subway, his knee touched Sett's.

He felt a little like a teenager all over again with all those shy glances and even shyer touches that made him feel all tingly and like he really wanted to wrap both his arms around Aphelios and hold him close. From where he was sitting, he inhaled his scent - It was too tender for an aftershave, maybe a shampoo? Perfume? - with every breath he took. He observed himself huffing at an unnatural rhythm so that, once they got out, he felt dizzy from breathing so awkwardly. He couldn't help it. Aphelios' proximity just did that to him.

Aphelios was standing in front of him at the foot mat to his door and Sett trapped his wandering gaze with his eyes, locking them and parting his lips in insecurity about what to say after all the hours that they had spoken about everything and nothing at once. He ran his fingers through his hair and when he brought his hand back down, Aphelios caught his wrist with slender fingers. Sett thought that his digits felt oh so delicate and tempting and that Aphelios looked oh so delicate and tempting. He wanted to lean down and place a kiss on his cupid bow, the revealing corners of his mouth and he almost did.

Aphelios kept on holding his wrist, just barely, loosely, and muttered: "Thanks for the date. I enjoyed it."

Eventually, he let it go, his fingertips gracing Sett's arm and Sett thought: another time.

2

After their date, Sett's mother continued to invite Aphelios over and Aphelios continued to come and have dinner at their place. Sometimes Sett came home right when he was about to ring the bell and sometimes he entered to see Aphelios already sitting there with his momma, looking at old photographs or watching cartoons on TV.

It felt odd that Aphelios already was such a regular guest in their apartment after Sett had not even deemed it appropriate to hold his hand yet, let alone kiss him. Whenever they shared the two-seater in the living room, Sett found himself sneaking careless fingers to his wrists and palms, his knees and sometimes even his neck and hair.

There was a time Aphelios was sitting there with his legs tucked up, his lips were slightly parted as the fight scene in the cartoon ensued, and Sett's hands felt hot and ravenously eager to just touch him in any way. He eyed him, sat down and spread his arm across the backrest so that it was leaning behind where Aphelios' hair met his neck and spine. His mouth was softly swollen and red from the chilli his mother had cooked earlier that day before leaving for work and he continued to lick them even after finishing his portion almost half an hour ago.

Aphelios had his habits of zeroing in on a series, of screwing his brows and squinting his eyes, relaxing them with the flow of the plot, had his way of parting his lips in a manner that made Sett helplessly stare and gulp with how much he craved to indulge in their gentle wetness and heart-shape with his own. He wanted to caress the contour with his tongue and taste him and feel him writhe as he did when Sett probed his thigh with his digits. As he did when Sett's hand shifted and eventually ended amidst his fingertips brushing the bone of Aphelios' neck, the shorter strands of black hair teasing his pale skin.

It was a soft shudder, a tender breeze of goosebumps and a barely noticeable exhale followed by his jaw twitching. Sett felt his puckered skin as he caressed him further, noticing Aphelios' mouth spasming with each time his tips and nails dragged featherily lightly over the paleness. Caressing someone's neck had never seemed more erotic and intimate to Sett. He hadn't thought that the younger man would be that responsive to such a subtle touch but it made his mind run wild with the thought that there might be other areas that forced his muscles to jerk and tense and hitch.

Aphelios kept still except for the vague hints his body gave away. He didn't move, didn't say anything and Sett yielded in the sensations of goosebumps and arches underneath his fingertips until the cartoon was interrupted by commercials. The man tilted his head, slightly only, so that his molten dark eyes turned to Sett. His gaze was swift and a little hazy and Sett wanted to envelop his neck with his hands fully and pull him close, on his lap, on him, onto the couch, anywhere.

Needless to say, he didn't do it. Instead, he stretched his arms as he looked at the TV and kept it lingering behind Aphelios without touching him again despite the hot and urgent shudders that went through his digits.

Moments like those recurred every now and then over the next two weeks in which they had their second date. It was a proper one for once at a sunny weekend that Aphelios had spent studying and Sett working his small shift. Aphelios wore a light shirt and Sett stared at his necklace and his slenderly tender waist and his lips when they got ice cream.

Aphelios ordered his scoops in a tub - strawberry and coconut - and picked a blue spoon with which he ate his icecream carefully, always licking the surface of the plastic twice after releasing it from his mouth. Sett was more the cone type of guy and caught the man throwing shy glances at him as he ate and spoke. Aphelios snorted and rolled his eyes and picked up more icecream whereat, overcome by a sudden wave of confidence, he placed his dangling arm on Aphelios' back. Somewhere in the middle where his waist was the smallest and he could feel the curve of his side. He didn't grip it, didn't tighten his embrace, didn't want Aphelios to feel possessed, owned, when he hadn't even found the right moment to kiss him yet.

So they were strutting through the light-flooded streets of the city and talking, sitting down on a bench and continuing their strut. At some point, Sett felt Aphelios' body close to his own. He had leaned in, just a bit, their sides and hips now brushed as they walked. His body felt so warm and his hair smelled so sweet that Sett couldn't help but sneak his hand further along his back until his fingertips nudged his waist by which he softly held him. Aphelios' body shifted even closer. The proximity left Sett's breath hitching and he had to tear his eyes off the smaller man to not throw away his cone and follow with his other hand.

He imagined how fragile Aphelios' body would appear if he was holding him, both hands on either side of his waist, eyes squinted at the way he would have to tip his head to return Sett's dark glance on him. He imagined looking down at him and eventually letting his lips ghost over Aphelios' and then his jaw and neck that had shivered and goosebumped so prettily the other day.

Their steps were synchronized and steady just as their talks and Aphelios' a little more high-pitched than usual expressions of amusement. The corners of his mouth seemed more jittery as well whereas it took Sett a bit to realize the manner in which his inhales were irregular and increased in their irregularity whenever he graced his waist with his fingertips, just gently, if only to tease him, to provoke his jittery creases.

Sett thought he might go insane.

3

They went back to their apartments in the evening. Sett's momma was at work and had left a pear pie behind that Aphelios decided to come over for. Sett had held him by his waist and lower back all the way home and caught quick glances of Aphelios' bent-over figure to get rid of his shoes. The curve of his bum flowed so graciously into his waistline and thighs. They had to be even paler than the rest of his body, Sett thought. Milky white skin seamlessly issuing into boney knees and tender calves that he wanted to bury his face in and caress them with everything he had.

Ever since their little touches and brushes had started, Sett's thoughts had been oh so audacious and ravenous that the mere sight of Aphelios excited him. When Aphelios eventually lifted himself up and blindly pawed at Sett to keep him steady until the dizziness had subsided, Sett closed his hand around his wrist and watched him shifting his gaze upwards. Aphelios' slender, creaseless ones locked with Sett's eyes and there was a moment of almost-silence.

It was promptly followed by the sound of clothes shifting, limbs aching, that resonated instantaneously before Sett sensed hot breath and eventually hot lips against his own. His eyes stayed on, darted to Aphelios' closed lids that were so close that he could take in the sight only blurrily. His body was afire, shuddering and hissing with the sudden sensation, the sudden scent enveloping him. Sett ended up closing his eyes, too, and added pressure to the softness, held Aphelios by the hand that was still resting on his chest. His fingers were tense and he eased them by caressing them until Aphelios' entire body comforted into his heat.

His back quivered underneath Sett's other hand's strokes and his mouth fell agape as their lips longed and chased after another. It was wet and warm and sweet from the ice cream they had eaten earlier and Aphelios' gasped so gently, sweetly, when Sett caught his bottom lip between his own, tugging him closer to his chest. He felt his long hair tingling his nose and eventually his mouth. He couldn't hold in the chuckle against Aphelios' breath, snuck a blind hand up to their faces and brushed the strands out of his blushing face. With that motion, he cupped his cheek and parted from the younger man.

Aphelios' eyes were dull but awfully pretty and shy in the way they ran all over Sett yet never to his face as he held his jaw and sensed his breath against his wetted lips. He wanted to kiss him again, wanted to grab him by his locks and gnaw on his lips and creases until they were reddened and swollen and Aphelios hot and shaky. God, wanted Sett to ravish and indulge in all of him.

Finally, Aphelios looked up and despite the seldom pink across his cheeks, he gazed at him as if he hadn't just kissed him, as if he had no idea what he had done to Sett. Sett's eyes moved from Aphelios' to his lips and back up. His thumb probed the soft skin of his mouth and as it parted at the touch with Aphelios' eyes looking dreadfully sultry and tempting, Sett reached for his jaw and pulled him back up against his lips.

Aphelios inhaled sharply and Sett brushed his cheek and waist, held him carefully as if he was too fragile to be treated in any other way. They kissed until Sett felt dizzy with the warmth of Aphelios' body pressed against his and his dainty fingers inside his hair, on his scalp and nape. He touched him as cautiously as he spoke and it drove Sett insane, craved to see Aphelios unravel more and more underneath his lips and caresses.

They didn't mention the kisses when they sat down to have pie and watched the cooking channel on TV but Aphelios still leaned against Sett's side on the two-seater and acknowledged the hand around his shoulder with the heavy hand stroking his upper arm by humming. It was a satisfied hum, one followed by twitching creases and jaws and when Sett rubbed his neck, he quivered and pressed himself against the taller man more closely. That way they stayed till Sett's mother came and Sett decided to bring Aphelios home.

He wrapped up two pieces of pie and handed Aphelios the foil-covered bundle when they said their goodbyes.

"Sett?", the younger man eventually called out his name and Sett turned back to him.

Then Aphelios stepped closer, tiptoed and pressed his lips against the corner of Sett's mouth. Before Sett could turn his head and catch his gentle kiss as he had done it earlier, Aphelios waved and disappeared. Sett stood and stared at the closed door for a little longer, licking his lips to savour the last bits of pear pie and Aphelios that the man had left there to linger and remind Sett of how badly he wanted him.

His momma gave him a weird look as he reentered with a stupid grin on his face and he excused himself to bed earlier than usual. In his bed, he laid and remembered Aphelios' lips against his, his sweet odour and his shy glances. Then he fell asleep and dreamt of him.

5

Aphelios' kisses became more eager the more time they spent together. Sometimes he would kiss Sett seemingly out of nowhere, just nudge his cheek with his palm and press his lips against his, would stroke his broad shoulders and muscular upper arms, especially when Aphelios visited him after he had come home from boxing. He said he would like to watch sometime and Sett took him with him on a Friday.

May was nearing and it was starting to get warm, fuzzy. Aphelios wore light shirts and light pants and Alune's chain and Sett watched him and his smile whenever he could. He even watched him while he was warming up, punching his bag, feeling his gaze on him. Aphelios timidly peeked around the corner of the changing rooms and eventually turned around as if he had never seen a man naked when Sett got rid of his shorts, chuckling at the younger man. He didn't dare to admit that the mere notion of Aphelios watching him as he got undressed already had made his mind spin and that the kisses Aphelios gave him when they were about to head out, swift and urgent, left him dizzy. He had to know. Had to know what he did to Sett.

Sett never took or demanded more than Aphelios was ready to give. He wanted all of this to be okay for him and at the same time didn't want to make him feel as though Sett expected any of those things from him. So when they walked home together, Sett's hand hovering over his hip and Aphelios' cheek nudging his shoulder, and Aphelios told him that he sometimes envied him for how much his mother loved him because his own parents always had loved Alune more, Sett squeezed his side and didn't ask for any more.

But Aphelios wanted to speak. It was dawning and he was staring at the pavement ahead of them like he had when he had first told him about his twin sister. He said that her favourite pie flavour had been coconut and that for every special occasion his mother had baked exactly what Alune had loved the most. The first time that he had eaten a different pie for their birthday had been at his first love's house, he had been 14. His parents had liked Aphelios and he had spent as much time as he could in the comfort of their home, in the comfort of the boy's presence that he had so utterly fallen in love with. He had known how to play the piano and Aphelios had loved the violin. They had played together at the school's orchestra. He had had a girlfriend and Aphelios had wanted to despise her but she had played the cello so beautifully and had been gentle with him whenever she had come to visit her boyfriend and Aphelios had already been there.

She had also helped his love's mother make the pear pie, had told Aphelios to make a wish when the candles were lit. Aphelios had wished that someone would love him the most. He had eaten a lot of pie, it had been the first one that had been made for him and him only after all, and had shyly held the boy's hand to thank him for everything that he had done for him. Their friendship had started to crumble with his parents finding out about the school's orchestra.

Aphelios' voice was quiet, small, if not tiny, as he said that they had forbidden him to keep playing the violin and that his first love had been too busy with his music to keep meeting privately, secretly without Aphelios' parents knowing. His voice sounded so sad that Sett hated himself for only knowing how to cup his cheeks and bump against his face with his lips, looking at him with all the affection he held for that man. But Aphelios took what he gave him, thanked him for listening and Sett shushed him, saying he liked hearing him talk, liked getting to know more about him.

Then: "You deserve to be loved, ya know?"

"Ya parents might've thought ya need to do somethin' special to deserve it but ma and I don't care if you save people's lives. It ain't about that. It's about what'ya make others feel."

He eventually told that Aphelios made him feel good, happy, at which Aphelios' pressed his lips together and gulped, eyes low along with his head. Like that he kissed Sett's stubbly jaw and whispered that he made him feel good, too.

For the rest of the way, he held Sett's hand and his digits sparked with the desire to envelop Aphelios entirely in the warmth of his embrace until all the pain and sadness he held - about Alune's death, about being a disappointment to his parents, about never having been someone's first choice - had disappeared and faded into nothingness along with his tense muscles and quivering lips until they existed no longer in this reality.

Aphelios came to pick him up from boxing at times and when Sett could, he fetched him from campus to his or their place. There they cooked or held hands or kissed all while Sett told him about things dear to him and Aphelios mentioned that he didn't even like the grotesque of medicine and that he would rather do something else. They shared little secrets and big blatancies, coyly looked into each other's eyes and boldly let hands wander underneath shirt hems. They giggled and bickered and teased and pecked and Sett was oh so deeply in love.

He still looked at Alune's necklace and thought that he wanted Aphelios to wear something that belonged to him whereas it wasn't until they stargazed one night in May that he found out about Aphelios' love for Clair De Lune and with it the motive he deemed worthy of representing the man.

They were sitting at the foot of a fountain in the middle of the city. It was mild and the night sky was clear, passersby swarming around them, seldom cars rustling. Aphelios' hand was pressed against the warm stone and Sett's lingered on top. From afar, they heard piano music accompanied by a violin. Sett knew the area, knew that the piano and the violin stood there day and night, waiting to be played. The musicians played a generic assortment of just as generic songs that even Sett had heard before (His knowledge about music was very limited, reduced to a few lullabies that his momma had sung to him as a child). Then a new song started and Aphelios stilled in the middle of a cautious sentence about how pretty the sky was.

His ears twitched gently and Sett could tell by his writhing jaw that he was thinking, concentrating.

"Clair De Lune", Aphelios whispered, his head tilted upward as if he was able to hear the music better like that.

Sett hummed, questioning, and Aphelios uttered that it used to be his favourite song to play. After yet another hum, Sett finally got up. Bowing in front of the man, he reached for his tender fingers and interlaced them with his own as he pulled him into a standing position. Aphelios had his brows furrowed and eyes squinted at him but Sett quietly grinned, muttered that he should let himself be surprised.

With his tender clasp on Aphelios' hand, he pulled him closer to where the music was coming from until a woman and a man entered their vision. She was playing the violin with her lids half-closed and he looked at her from his sitting position at the piano, ducking his head with every chord he played. Sett didn't let go of Aphelios, merely glanced at him and took in the sight of his eyes widened and lips parted as he watched and blinked and gaped. His cupid bow was shimmering beautifully and he puckered his lips in his common manner that Sett interrupted with a gentle hand stroking the bangs out of his face. He didn't want him to avert his eyes from the artists playing his favourite song, didn't want him to focus his mind on anything else.

When the music ended, the few people surrounding them clapped and Sett let go of Aphelios so that he could follow suit. The couple bowed to the crowd and stepped to the side so that someone else could have their go at the instruments. And because no one else seemed to want to go ahead, Sett scooted forward and picked up the violin. With the wood in his hands, he stared back at Aphelios, flashing a grin. The man's eyes grew wide in an instant, his hands flew up to his chest to wave in a flustered manner and shake his head.

But Sett's gaze stayed stern and he said: "C'mon, I believe in you."

The bystanders made cheering sounds of approval, prompted him to have the courage. Aphelios looked between all the strangers and eventually the one familiar face that was smiling at him so affectionately with his hand reaching out for his. He clasped it and felt Sett tugging him closer until he pressed the violin into his hands.

Sett saw his fingers tremble, nestling up to the wooden curves, the smooth surface. His rosy lips were parted as he examined the instrument, felt up to it and furrowed his brows. He seemed to whisper inaudibly, Sett couldn't hear him, thought he wasn't even supposed to, before he rested his chin on the black part. Aphelios looked docile, vulnerable almost in the way he leaned into the plank touch, his fingers spread and tense around the bow that didn't touch the strings for another moment.

When it did, the sound was shaky but steadied as Aphelios continued, developed the sombre melody that Sett thought he must have heard somewhere before. His bangs were covering his squinted eyes, his dark and batted lashes, his cheeks reddened, but he was gripping the fingerboard cautiously yet unwaveringly. He played a wrong note, played it again, sometimes faltered, sometimes hissed underneath his breath and screwed up his face in an expression Sett wasn't able to designate. But he continued. His body sunk in the way the bow moved, slid over the strings and Sett thought that he had never been more beautiful.

Lanterns brightened the plastered piece of pavement and voices echoed through the dimness, the silence of the city that wasn't silent because there were cars and passersby and Aphelios playing the violin so passionately and his resounding hiccups. And the dimness didn't seem so dim with the moon illuminating Aphelios in the loveliest way possible.

That was when Sett realized that if Alune was the sun, Aphelios was the moon.

6

The necklace was silver and shorter than Alune's. Sett didn't want Aphelios to think he had to take off his sister's chain just to wear that gift. He wanted him to be able to decide whether it could replace that part of her that he clung onto and carried around at all times. He asked his mother to wrap it into pastel blue gift wrap. He had decided against a bow or any other fancy decoration. It was just a small gesture, after all, something to make Aphelios smile, feel special, _liked_ by Sett.

Sett stood at his doorstep with the small box in his hand one evening and smiled brightly when Aphelios opened up in a pair of sweatpants and a sweater already. He liked being comfortable within his apartment and had said that he didn't mind if Sett came over just as comfortably dressed. He shouldn't bother to look fancy whilst it was just the two of them eating and watching cartoons. Sett had laughed at that and said that he would have done it anyway, even without Aphelios' permission and Aphelios had rolled his eyes and teased him about being such a big boy already.

He was smiling back at Sett and took a step aside when he asked him if he could come in. There, he stroked Aphelios' hair with his free hand and caught his eager lips its eagerness faltered with his gaze falling onto the arm hidden behind Sett's back.

"What's that?"

His nose fluttered and Sett grinned: "A li'l surprise for ya."

With those words, he shoved the present into Aphelios' hands that had previously been placed against his chest. He blinked as he looked between the gift wrap and Sett's excited expression and, eventually, reluctantly tugged the corners of the paper.

"You didn't have to get me anything", he murmured but continued to unwrap the box nevertheless.

Aphelios knew that Sett wouldn't accept him rejecting the gift so he didn't even try. Sett stared at him almost antsily wringing his hands and running his fingers through his hair, tried to take in each and every of Aphelios' expressions, changes in the corners of his mouth and folds around his eyes, his brows. His lids creased at the sight of the casket and his slender fingers wrapped gracefully around the lid to lift it and reveal the silver necklace nuzzled in velvet.

The pendant was tender and seemed so small compared to Aphelios' fingertip caressing the silver half-moon. Sett was chewing on his bottom lip and cleared his throat, silently speaking.

"I thought it might be pretty on ya. And you still got that necklace, ya know? Just-", he frowned, "wanted to give ya something nice. For you."

He suddenly felt very stupid for stuttering and giving Aphelios that necklace in the first place but Aphelios directed his gaze at him. He looked him in the eyes with an indescribable shimmer in his eyes and suddenly his hand was on his nape and his lips on his and he felt just as taken aback as during the first time he had kissed him. He thought he would never get completely used to the excitement and desire with which Aphelios kissed.

Sett held him by the back of his head, softly entangling his fingers with Aphelios' black hair and caressing his scalp and strands. Aphelios' hand on his neck was firm and he pulled himself closer against Sett's chest by it, he had to be tiptoeing. Sett received him with his other hand on his waist and stroked and gently held him as Aphelios was devouring him, parting his lips and receiving Sett's tongue with an intensity that was new to him. He felt his head spinning, his breath hitching.

Aphelios continued to kiss him, continued to gnaw on his lips and tongue and to paw his chest with the hand clasping the box.

He could feel the edge against his ribs, muttered: "You wan' ", Aphelios kissed the corner of his mouth repeatedly, "me to", he caught Sett's lip, lids batted, "put it on?"

"Please", Aphelios breathed against his wetted lips and handed Sett the box before swiftly turning around.

Sett noticed how close he still was, he could see the tiny hairs on Aphelios' neck and felt his heat through his own shirt, his bum just barely brushing his crotch. The hearty kiss had already got his mind twirling but with the man now nearly pushing himself against him, he had to find all the strength within himself to not push him against the next shelf and take him how he had been craving for a bit now. Aphelios shivered as his fingertips brushed his skin and locks and the silver of the chain was lowered onto his nape.

Sett's eyes were trained on the paleness and the two necklaces. Suddenly he found himself leaning in and pressing kisses along the exposed bits of his neck and collarbones. He gently bit the flesh and felt the shiver running through Aphelios' body with his lips still attached to him. So he sunk his teeth inside again and he panted so temptingly and deliciously responsively that Sett couldn't help but do it again and again, cover his entire neck in gentle bite marks and soft nibs until Aphelios' body was pressed against his. His arms had wrapped around his slender frame and were holding him through every tremor and sound escaping his cautiously pressed together lips. Sett could still hear, sense, them in the back of Aphelios' throat that he was stretching his tongue and teeth over so hungrily.

Aphelios' skin tasted sweet in its natural saltiness and his noises were driving Sett insane. He knew that he was aroused and that Aphelios could probably feel it, feel him growing against his lower back. When he then shoved his hips back at him, Sett twisted his face in a surprised grunt. He cursed underneath his breath against Aphelios' lobe and the man quivered.

From his position, tightly holding Aphelios in his embrace and close to his bulge, he examined his features, his fluttering lashes and dry lips that he licked and smacked with each time he added pressure to the length trapped between their bodies. Sett had never wanted to ravish someone as much as he wanted to ravish Aphelios at that moment but something held him back. Maybe it was the sudden - and admittedly ridiculous - thought - Aphelios was old enough to make his own decisions after all - that the man might be doing this to repay Sett, to thank him for the gift and not because he truly wanted to. Sett feared that if he were to ask him now if he did, Aphelios would say yes either way. No matter how pulsing and urgent his desire was, he longed for Aphelios' comfort even more.

He was breathing heavily along with his arms steadily loosening around Aphelios until he could move freely. He swung back to him and stared into his eyes with confusion mixed with arousal. It was apparent to Sett that he wanted to ask if he had done something wrong, if Sett was mad, disappointed, the moment he parted his lips so he shushed him softly with a thumb caressing the bottom one.

"It's all alright", he murmured, "Just don' wanna rush things."

Sett had meant it. He really had. After coming back home he even forced himself to take a cold shower and treated his dick with ignorance at every twitch it made. The memories of Aphelios' gasps and his face in that gentle state of bliss were vibrant and pungent, so persistent, that Sett wanted to punch a wall. But he had meant his words about not wanting to rush things whereas - he shall be forgiven - Aphelios had a different idea of what rushing meant.

It was as though the younger man had tasted blood and was now eager to draw more of it, Sett thought only a few days later. They were sitting on the couch and his hands snuck up to touch, probe, as gently as could be, the area of skin just below Aphelios' ear. It wasn't any more than they had done before, nothing rushed, nothing new or foreign. The manner in which Aphelios shivered and tensed underneath the fingertips, pulsed, however, was new as well as his sudden hands on Sett's nape and his thigh across his lap. He gasped inaudibly into Aphelios' eager mouth and gripped his hips hovering over his groin just barely.

He kissed and shoved his tongue into Aphelios' warmth that received him with a pant, high-pitched and shuddery, and Sett ached with how badly he wanted to tear all those sounds from his lips, his clothes from his body and in how Aphelios was lowering his clothed ass onto Sett's clothed crotch he knew that he wanted it, too. He thought about not wanting to rush things, wanting the man he was falling for to be sure that he wanted to be that intimate with him, to go further than kissing and touching one another in such timid ways.

Sett panted and purred "wait" and "ya sure?" and Aphelios gave him a glance of annoyance, barely rolled eyes and furrowed brows that quickly faded into a blur when he closed the space between their lips again with an urgent "yes".

It was all that Sett had needed, was all that had been holding him back until now. He tightened his grip on Aphelios' hips and pressed his bum down onto his bulge, leaned up into his kisses and caresses of his hair and nape. The sounds erupting from those swollen lips prompted him to dare and to go further. Eager, experimenting fingers nudged the hem of his sweatpants and eventually slid further down until his palms were groping his perked ass, kneading and cupping his grinding motion. He felt hot. So incredibly hot that all he could think about was to rid Aphelios and himself of their clothes, to press himself bared and sultrily against just as bare and sultry skin, his chest, his heart, his belly until their bodies would melt into each other within the heat their hasty touches had created.

Sett gripped Aphelios and pushed his back onto the cushions. His legs stayed tightly wrapped around him and Sett wanted to fuck him right then and there in his sprawled out pose, his slender arms dangling around him and on the backrest, his stomach exposed and thighs so tight the thought of burying his head in between them drove him crazy.

"Fuck", he hissed and tugged his shirt over his head, "Whaty're doin' to me."

With that, he clasped the edge of Aphelios' shirt and his tummy was pale and gentle and felt soft against his firm chest as he caged him between his arms to kiss him. They kissed until their lips were numb and Aphelios fidgeted with their pants and how could Sett ever refuse him anything at all? He was at his feet, worshipping him and his cupid bow and quakingly confident glances, his pursed lips and soft full-body shudders at each and every one of his touches. He drunk in the sight of his tensing and arching body underneath fingertips adorning his every inch and limb and never wanted to stop.

The couch was a tight fit so they moved to their room where Sett also kept a stash of condoms just in case and when he wrapped his arms around Aphelios again, he was so warm and firm and Aphelios moaned and so did he. He held him close to his broad chest, that slim frame of his with the wide shoulders and tiny waist, and kissed him and his shuddering neck. Aphelios' back curved in a manner that left Sett speechlessly with his mouth parted and panting and he continued to do so even when Aphelios straddled his hips again. His arms were locked around his neck and he cupped his ass tenderly in contrast to how desperately, intensely, Aphelios' motions were.

There it was again, the bliss that he had watched unfold within his expression before. This time it was a more matured version, as though the bliss had grown to be tall and strong and prominent, skewing his flushed features. Sett kissed those features over and over again, whispered to his lover how wonderful he felt, how much he had wanted this and the red deepened when he said that he had, too.

So they hugged and ground and held one another until their bodies shivered and convulsed with electricity and its sparks. Aphelios' voice sounded so awfully pretty in his ear and the hair underneath his stroking and clasping palm was sweaty. But Sett savoured every inch, every split second of it. Aphelios' shaky thighs on either side of his own, the sticky warmth between their burning bodies and on his hand, Aphelios' clenching tightness around his soft turning heat and his breath hitting his damp limbs. He held him and kissed him tired until he lifted him onto his mattress and patted him clean. Aphelios had gripped a tissue as well with which he wiped Sett's toned stomach, shyly glancing at the definition.

Sett stared at his gentle and nimble movements only to then wrap his arms around him. He willingly sunk into his embrace. Sett thought that maybe they should go and take a shower, thought that falling asleep together was too rushed. He still couldn't find it in him to give two fucks about not rushing things anymore.

7

Aphelios was a shy man per se but he was mature and smart hence when asked whether what happened had been alright with him, he nodded yes and added that he had wanted it, wanted to do it again. And when Sett declared that Aphelios had to know that he genuinely liked him, he smiled and pressed a gentle kiss on the corner of his mouth.

"I like you, too, Settrigh", his voice was oh so amused that Sett felt almost taunted by his words.

But he couldn't help but chuckle, breathlessly, because who would have thought that this man would like him the same way that he liked him. He was reminded of all those romance novels he had read and blushed at as a child and now he was sitting in front of Aphelios on his big bed, their hair wet from the showers they had taken separately, and he said those words that had brought him the greatest joy back then - now they were directed at him and they made his heart pound and heat up with affection.

Aphelios' locks were dripping from the ends and trickling onto his soft features and Sett's hand snuck up to brush the droplets away with his gentle thumb. He was staring at him and searching for the words but he had never been good with them so he just awkwardly muttered something along the lines that he shouldn't call him by his full name after he had had his dick inside of him, cupping his dryly wiped cheek with a wide grin.

Aphelios frowned and nudged his arm with his palm: "Don't say it like that."

Sett leaned in closer and gripped his slender wrists, tongue teasing his ear: "But that's what happened, moon. Didn' ya say you wanna do it again?"

And he laughed quietly and Aphelios snickered and rolled his eyes and they held and teased each other until they kissed and Sett pushed the smaller man back into the mattress.

8

"Settrigh", her voice sounded from the living room after Sett had come home from lunch with a colleague.

His ears perked up and once he had got rid of his shoes and bag, he shuffled into the room, peeking around the corner: "Ma?"

His mother was sitting on the couch with her legs and arms crossed, her eyes squinted. Sett knew that kind of pose. She used to sit like that whenever he had got into trouble at school. That had been years ago and he had been spared from her judgemental glances ever since. And as he stood there and watched her pat the armrest of the settle as a silent cue to sit down he tried to figure out what he could have possibly done wrong.

He followed her gesture and fell onto the cushion which prompted her to go on: "Is there something you would like to tell me?"

The manner in which she spoke those words made Sett duck his head, frowning. He tried to think of what she could be on about, what he had done throughout the past few days, maybe even weeks. It felt like a blur. Ever since he and Aphelios had first slept with one another, it had been a constant swift sharing of hungry kisses and touches all over, quick hand and blow jobs. It was as though there had been an invisible, intangible border that they had been dancing and wriggling on until one of them had fallen onto the other side and pulled the other one with them. Now that they were past that border, there was nothing stopping either from devouring each other, from mumbling sweet nothings and their obvious cravings, from throwing themselves at the other whenever there was a chance.

Sett could hardly think about anything else than Aphelios' blissful expression and his flushed cheeks and damp hair. He could hardly look him in the eye without wanting to hold and make him take him and Aphelios' keen hands didn't stay above his waistband for long either. But they had both agreed that they wanted to take it slow in regards to becoming official. They knew they liked one another but neither wanted the rush of a relationship yet, wanted to give themselves more time. Therefore, telling his mother also hadn't really been an option so far.

"What d'ya mean?", he feigned ignorance and his momma raised an eyebrow at him.

"We've been over this", she sighed, "But you don't have to say anything. Just know that I know everything."

With that she darted two pointed fingers from her eyes to her son, gesturing attempted menacingly.

Sett frowned, muttering: "Am I in some kinda spy movie? Should I be worried?"

"Very funny, Settrigh."

9

Aphelios chuckled and breathed heavily against Sett's warm palm whenever his mother was at home next door and looked up at him with his eyes squinted, daring, tempting. They knew that it would be easier to wait for the times she was at work and both of them not occupied by their work or major but Aphelios was so needy and demanding and Sett couldn't deny him being pinned down and taken.

"Don't let her hear", Sett sometimes shushed Aphelios whereas he loved hearing him pant and scrunch up his face in quiet, low whines.

And Aphelios would grin underneath his hand - He could feel the corners of his mouth twitching, tickling his skin - and take his own to cover Sett's features in the same manner. They would clasp each other's mouths and stifle their groans and sweat underneath blankets to muffle the sounds of their desperate limbs against desperate limbs and do it until they were too tired to even lift a teasing finger.

It wasn't until the summer fair that they picked up where they had left off with their dates. Sett got Aphelios from his apartment one free weekend. He was wearing a loose shirt loosely tucked into a loose pair of jeans that clung to his slender waist for dear life and his collarbones shone with the necklace Sett had given him. He wasn't wearing Alune's. Sett stared at him while walking down the staircase and then to the subway, eyeing him shamelessly and having Aphelios chuckle and laugh at that shamelessness.

"You're _brazen_ ", Aphelios muttered and Sett grinned widely at him from the side.

"That's on you."

Aphelios rolled his eyes and said that he shouldn't blame him for how he couldn't keep his eyes and hands to himself at which Sett laughed quietly against his ear.

Their hands and knuckles brushed all the way to the fair until Sett eventually clasped Aphelios' firmly and let the man drag him across the fair. They had one at the coast of Aphelios' hometown but nothing as ominous and grand as the one in this city, his lover told Sett with his eyes darting over the attractions and booths offering all kinds of food.

"My ma and I used to come here when I was younger", Sett hummed, "Kinda grew out of it."

After a bit of walking around, it was eventually Sett who hauled Aphelios to the funnel cake booth and widely smiling ordered two. The powdered sugar covered their noses and lips in sweet snow that he licked off Aphelios' merely protesting and groaning face.

"You seem pretty excited for someone who has grown out of it", Aphelios teased him with the corners of his mouth twitching and nudged his powdered upper lip with his tongue in return.

"Only 'cause you're here with me", he recited the cheesy words that could have come from any romance novel protagonist but he meant them and he smiled in that honest and big way.

With that same smile, he endured the spinning rides and a large serving of cattle corn and lemonade that they inhaled until their tummies hurt from eating, drinking and laughing. It had become late and Aphelios' arm was limp in their hooked hold. In between his slurping sips, the younger man yawned and Sett found his tired eyes endearing. So endearing, so lovely, that he didn't want to leave yet.

He asked him whether he was in for one last ride and Aphelios tilted his head up at him before nodding. So he intertwined their fingers and got two tickets for the Ferris wheel. Sett had always had a partiality for cheesy dates and grand, romantic gestures although he had never fallen in love with someone intensely enough to feel the urge to attempt at any of those things.

Aphelios, however, noted them with just the right amount of feigned condescension and batted, truthfully touched lashes and Sett had fallen for him just stupidly enough that he wanted to be cheesy with him, craved nothing more than having him flustered just a tad, watching his brows crumple as he tried to fathom why someone would go to any lengths at all to have him happy and content. Sett wanted to go to all the lengths and see all the crumpling and flustering until he would grow tired of it. He didn't think he would ever but that might be his lovey-dovey brain speaking.

Sett held his hand and steadied him by his clasp when Aphelios followed him into the cabin. The small door was closed shut and their seats jiggled when the wheel was set into motion. Aphelios was squeezed tightly on the leather next to Sett and their broad shoulders bumped against each other until the cabin's movements settled, He blindly searched for the man's hand and intertwined their fingers as he nodded at the city below them. The rides, the booths and the buildings surrounding the fairground were dripping in oranges and pinks. From up there, it all looked like a painting, like a fantastic, filtered version of the city they lived in.

Sett watched Aphelios' expression in awe as he leaned over him and then back to look down from every angle and he gently squeezed his hand. He felt Aphelios' warmth against his body, radiating from him. His hair was tousled and before Aphelios could even notice Sett carded his fingers through the shimmering strands and eventually placed his palm on his cheek. Aphelios instantly locked gazes with him. Sett still saw the jolting of his mouth and he couldn't help but chuckle and caress his cheek with his thumb.

The shadow of his digit was colourful, Aphelios' entire skin was, ethereal, gleaming in a way that hurt Sett with how much he wanted to worship him. He leaned in just a tad and kissed his cupid bow and whispered that he looked beautiful. And Aphelios breathed out a light chuckle, cupped Sett's hand with his own and tilted his head upwards until their noses nudged against each other.

Then the Ferris wheel came to a halt as they reached the top once again and Sett knew they would stay here for a bit until the new passengers were seated. He also knew that it might be stupid and that he could ruin what they had, what they felt, their staring and touching and admiring.

And yet, the words rolled off his lips so swiftly and mindlessly that he had no time to think about his wildly beating heart or his dizziness: "Do you want to be my boyfriend?"

The breath he didn't know he had been holding was released when Aphelios pressed his lips against his, kissed him until the wheel had started to move again and he eventually parted from him with an orange-shimmering "Yes".

  
  



	3. Part III - Boyfriends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They did all of those cheesy things that Sett had heard and read about and they felt about just as cheesy as he had imagined them to be. But it was beautiful, surreal, as though it was all just a dream."
> 
> Or, Settrigh and Aphelios are imperfectly and stupidly in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must admit that, so far, this was my favourite part to write. I even teared up a little describing their love and I hope that you will love it as much as I do.  
> Enjoy!
> 
> The Settphel DC server link as always: https://discord.gg/Me2sfXV

1

The first summer, Aphelios was an eager lover. He kissed hungrily, undressed quickly and devoured Sett whole heartily. He took him as though he had never craved anything more than being taken and poured his desires all over Sett until he was breathless and hot. For the next few weeks, he spent almost every moment he wasn't working or boxing at Aphelios' apartment, making love to him and fucking him roughly when the younger one desired it and no matter how often he felt Aphelios' nails digging in his back and his thighs shaking, he couldn't get enough of the sight.

They ate ice cream like young lovers did and threw lascivious glances at one another whenever they did, went swimming at the lake and made out on rocky, tiny stones underneath the moonlight where Aphelios would hum Clair De Lune and look oh so ethereal. They would go strawberry picking - Aphelios had never done it before and Sett had rubbed the after sun into his sunburn gently and lovingly - and make pies with Sett's mother together. They celebrated first her, then Sett's birthday. They did all of those cheesy things that Sett had heard and read about and they felt about just as cheesy as he had imagined them to be. But it was beautiful, surreal, as though it was all just a dream.

The dream continued through autumn. Sett left sweaters at Aphelios' place from time to time and sometimes he would greet him wearing the fabric reeking of himself, studying for his exams in them. Aphelios clung more, kissed with less tongue yet with the same passion that he had kissed him summerly. He desired more love and less rough fucking and when the anniversary of Alune's death and exams approached, they even had their first fight.

Sett apologized and so did Aphelios and they hugged and kissed and the younger man cried - Aphelios didn't ever cry - because he didn't want to scare away the someone who made him the happiest he had been in so long. Alune's anniversary passed, so did the exam period and their birthday, and with the first fall of snow, Aphelios was his old calm and eye-rolling self again.

He wore more of Sett's clothes during winter and usually woke up in between his sheets. He had breakfast with Sett and his mother and kissed him goodbye when he left for work. He cleaned up Sett's room and helped with the dishes only to then do the same at his own flat where he would wait until Sett came back. Sett would leave his bag at his mom's and then instantly dive into his boyfriend's apartment to hold him on the couch and watch the snow falling with Christmas cartoons playing in the background.

They held warmly wrapped hands at the Christmas fair and ate sweet, roasted chestnuts and shared just as sweetly flavoured kisses with their red noses bumping against each other. Sett would always make sure Aphelios' bobble cap - his momma had knitted two for both of them - covered his ears entirely because his love always got cold and hot so easily and Aphelios would snicker at the gesture with that blissful smile on his trembling lips. Sett kissed them and his cheeks warm until he wasn't sure if the blush came from the cold or the affection anymore.

Aphelios spent Christmas with Sett and his mother. They baked and cooked together in that small kitchen of theirs and bumped limbs and laughed and sang crookedly along with the cheesy songs on the radio. At least Sett and she did. Aphelios sang nothing like that, shy, quiet, but he did it so melodically and sweetly that Sett laughed at his own incompetence and kissed Aphelios' forehead, telling him that his voice sounded beautiful. And he flushed because Sett had said those words before but in a different scenario. (He said it again later that night and laughed and kissed the timid flutter away.)

Sett's mother had knitted two big sweaters for them and thanked Aphelios for being such a good boyfriend to her son. Aphelios smiled bashfully and returned the words of gratitude, for raising such a wonderful man who could make him feel all those things. Sett wouldn't have shied away to make a cheeky and dirty remark usually but he knew that this was meaningful to him. Being with a family who valued and loved him for who he was. So instead he wrapped his arms around him and his mother followed and whispered that she loved her two boys at which Aphelios shook.

Sett's present for Aphelios was an envelope addressed to "moon" and it contained a confirmation email of the payment of a set of violin lessons. He explained, shakily, that they even offered an instrument rental so that Aphelios didn't have to worry about not having his own violin. Sett was trembling internally and praying that his boyfriend would like it.

Of course, he did. He hugged and kissed him and smiled at him with a brightness that he had last seen when he had been playing the violin at the curb. And although he was more than excited about the new pair of boxing gloves, his smile had been the best gift Aphelios could have ever given him.

2

Spring came over them like it had when they had first met one another. Aphelios was standing at the elevator and Sett came up to him, reciting his first words, and Aphelios snickered and wrapped his arms around him. Then Sett said that he couldn't believe Aphelios hadn't shushed him away the day he came back to his door ringing and asking about pie.

"I thought you were cute", Aphelios admitted.

Sett let out a huff and flexed his muscles: "Cute? Me? 'm not cute!"

"Whatever you say, cute man."

Rolling eyes, another giggle. Aphelios being his gently teasing, usual self. Sett looked at his dim features - they hadn't turned on the lights yet - and he whispered that he loved him. It was sudden, out of nowhere. They hadn't said it before, only mentioned that they liked each other a lot but it had become more and more apparent to Sett that he truly did love Aphelios.

When he said it back, Sett kissed him with his chest tight and they made love until the stars shone brightly.

Sett loved him as he was thawing along with the world and became freezingly cold in an instant with his parents' calls. Sett had witnessed their regular check-ups before and how they tended to doubt Aphelios' commitment to his major and his usage of the money they provided him with. In his cold state, Aphelios didn't want any hugs, any kisses, became small and fragile and yet spiked with deadly armour that could annihilate anyone who dared to come too close. So Sett kept his distance during those calls, sometimes even left and waited for Aphelios to text him that everything was alright. He respected the relationship he had with his parents and didn't want to force any sort of idea about forgiveness upon him. Not when he disliked Aphelios' parents himself.

Things got better in summer. Aphelios spent his free time at the retirement home Sett worked at, sometimes he played the violin there. He solved puzzles with the elderly and read to them like Sett liked to do it. He drank watered down apple juice with him and his colleagues and he didn't shy away to say that Sett was his boyfriend. He proudly held his and the old people's hands and got along so splendidly with all of them despite his timid nature that Sett couldn't help but think that he would be lovely with children.

He told him about that odd thought one hot evening at Aphelios' flat, naked and freed from any sheets on top of them. The warm summer breeze was swaying over their kissed skin and Aphelios perked up from his notes, bow still in his hand. What Sett meant, he asked and Sett said that he had always wanted to have a family, a chance to prove to his lover, his mother but mostly to himself that he could be better than his father. That he had always wanted to raise a child that didn't have to fear being left, didn't have to find ways to deal with its anger and frustration as he had.

Aphelios let go of the instrument, cupped his knuckles and kissed his temple, whispering that he wanted to improve on his own parents' mistakes, too. It wasn't even their anniversary yet and, still, Sett realized that he would love to have a baby with his Aphelios.

On the day that marked the first year of their relationship, it was Aphelios who surprised Sett by taking him on a trip to his hometown. He was anxiously squeezing his hand throughout the entire train ride and only stopped when Sett pecked his digits one by one, looking him in the eye and muttering that he loved him. He told him how grateful he was that Aphelios let him in on his past, part of him, like that and that he was so brave for doing it. He didn't say it as poetically and as deftly but it made Aphelios laugh and ease underneath his tenderly pursed lips and words.

It was not only Sett's first time in that area of their country but also the first time he would ever meet Aphelios' parents in person. Sett had suggested that they could take a hotel, he would even pay, they didn't have to stay at their old house, but Aphelios had insisted. He wanted Sett to get to know them, wanted him to see the place he and Alune had grown up in, and besides, it was only a weekend. His parents would know how to behave.

Aphelios introduced Sett as a good friend and despite his grasp of the situation, Sett couldn't help but feel as though - although Aphelios showing him a side of him so raw and vulnerable that the tiniest touch could make it bleed tons and tons of blood and tears and skin - he had never felt farther away from him. His boyfriend was irritable that Friday evening and left to sleep in his old room without kissing Sett on the couch goodnight. He tried to be understanding, tried not to fault or judge Aphelios for his frustration. Hell, he was frustrated himself. Dinner couldn't have been more frustrating, packed with his parents mourning Alune's death and claiming that Aphelios was their only hope of continuing her dreams she never got to live.

Sett wanted to throw up, all over their stupidly perfect home and their stupidly perfectly arranged dinner table and their stupidly perfect words that covered the disappointment they felt about everything Aphelios did. Sett could nearly taste it with every sentence that came out of their mouths and every glance they threw at Aphelios' direction. He didn't know what his boyfriend was thinking, hoping for, but he wasn't about to make a cheesy, romance-novel-like scene to convert his parents.

The next day, Aphelios took him to Alune's grave early enough for his family to still be asleep. He drove his old bike and Sett was sitting on the rack. They were silent until Aphelios asked into the wind: "Are you mad at me?"

Sett was mad but not necessarily at him and rather at the way he was letting all of this affect both of them, how he didn't kiss him before going to bed, how he wouldn't even let Sett hold his hand underneath the table to support him in any way. And he was mad at his parents who didn't miss a single opportunity to bring up Alune and her oh so great ambitions.

Aphelios didn't reply until they arrived at the graveyard. There he looked at the grass beneath their slowly walking feet and held Sett's wrist loosely.

"Alune was great", he mumbled, "And she had great ambitions and I suppose she was a lot that I just am not."

He shrugged and Sett knew better than to overwhelm him with his embrace right away.

"She always acted as though our puppets had broken bones and used bandages from first aid class", his voice almost sounded amused at that memory, "And then she stitched them up and gave them those doctorly words of encouragement. She told everyone that it was her calling, even when she was first diagnosed."

"She didn't believe that she would die, maybe we were just too young to understand what it meant in the first place. But she kept studying, even in hospital all she did was asking questions - not because she cared about what was happening to her but because she wanted to know how to treat her patients in the future."

Aphelios stopped in front of a grave that carried his twin sister's name. Sett finally wriggled his hand out of Aphelios' grip on his wrist and instead interlaced their fingers, squeezing his icy digits.

"I felt guilty because she was just so good to everyone and knew what to do with herself and her life", Aphelios huffed, "And I felt guilty because when she got worse I was relieved."

The younger man shook his head and lifted it in the motion so that he was facing Sett. He looked back at him with his brows furrowed in worry, whispering and muttering "hm"s and "I get it"s.

"No- you don't have to lie", Aphelios wagged his head again. 

Now it was Sett's turn to huff. He brought up his other hand to cup Aphelios' cheek, keeping his face steady and upright: "But I _do_ get it. All your life ya never were your own person and when she got sick you ceased to exist."

Sett was fumbling with his words, helplessly, because he did understand yet all the words that had ever meant something to him had been black ink on white pages about fantastic romances or coming out of Aphelios' mouth and he feared he might never be able to give back something just as meaningful to the man he loved.

"Ya might feel guilty but", Sett leaned in a bit, not averting his eyes from his love, "I think you're only human."

"Imperfectly, stupidly human", Aphelios murmured.

"I love you imperfectly and stupidly."

They bought flowers for Alune and stayed at a hotel directly on the coast for the rest of the weekend. Aphelios hadn't seen the sea ever since Alune's death and Sett had never felt real sand between his toes. They sunbathed and went to the fair, held one another until the sun went down, watched it disappear behind the horizon of shaky, glittering waves and kissed when they walked back in the dark with their hands intertwined. They woke up to the sound of seagulls and giggled in roaring showers with timid hands over timid bodies and they loved each other so crookedly, so imperfectly and stupidly that it hurt.

Aphelios quit university the day they got back and signed up at the smallest opera of their city along with a new university. Music pedagogy, Aphelios proclaimed excitedly. Later, he blocked his parents' numbers and opened a new account at the bank.

Sett had seen Aphelios play the violin, had seen the excitement in his eyes, the eagerness to do well and even if he didn't do well to just do it, but there was something new about his way of scrolling through job offers and writing applications to a variety of different places. It was as though Aphelios had never truly lived in his skin until he had banished the ones keeping it occupied and now, for the first time in all his life, he had reclaimed his body. He was alive, smiling and rolling his eyes, making love to Sett more vividly than ever and Sett loved him with more vividness than ever, too.

They bought him a violin together - an own one - and Aphelios played it all evening long to Sett and his mother after having pear pie. For Sett's birthday, Aphelios gave him a key to his flat.

He was accepted by the caféteria of Sett's workplace and despite him now being busier, the new major and jobs made him shine and glow. Most of the day he spent serving cake to the lovely elderlies of the retirement home while he would practise or play at the opera every other night. The nights that he wasn't occupied, he spent in Sett's arms. He told him about the wonderful lessons and about the funny things the old people told him and Sett laughed, countering with the things the demented ones sometimes came up with.

So they giggled into each other's mouths, whispered and moaned sweet everythings and fell asleep enveloped in the other's warmth and the summerly heat of a fading season.

In autumn, they went back to wrapping themselves in shared clothes. Sett baked a lot with his mother while Aphelios was away and picked him up from the opera whenever he could and wasn't training himself. They worked separate shifts and lived their separate hobbies but wouldn't miss out on a chance to support one another. When Sett had a boxing match, Aphelios was sitting in the first row and keeping his fingers crossed and when Aphelios played, Sett was the first one to buy two tickets and was the one who clapped and cheered the loudest at every break.

Winter and Christmas caught his boyfriend in preparations and the rare times that they saw each other, Aphelios was too tired to stay awake for long. But Sett didn't mind. As long as he could kiss his sleepy face awake and make some cheesy breakfast for him that would make his love smile in that gentle, loving manner there was nothing more he desired.

It wasn't easy to be apart for most of the week after having spent more than a year at each other's side but Sett loved Aphelios and he loved seeing him do what he loved and the orchestra at Christmas Eve was worth it. Aphelios had never practised for anything more than that performance and his body moved and shuddered along with the other instruments and he moved and shuddered in the same manner when Sett kissed his neck and spine and whispered how much he had missed his moon.

He had missed him, too.

3

With their third spring together, they contemplated moving in together. They searched for a small apartment near their current building so that they could still spend some time at Sett's old home, they just thought it was time to look for something of their own. It took almost the entire season until they were accepted.

Their new home had a working, non-deadly elevator and their colleagues, Sett's mother and Aphelios' uni friends all squeezed into the 60 something square metres to have pie and congratulate the young couple on taking the next step in their relationship. It was hardly big enough to accommodate all of their friends and acquaintances but it was pretty and their own. It even had a small balcony that Sett's mother had already occupied with some of her plants.

While they were all eating, she made a joking remark when they would marry as she still wanted to be pretty when attending her lovely son's wedding whereas it made Sett widen his eyes in embarrassment. He had, of course, thought about marrying Aphelios someday but not yet, didn't want to rush anything. It still made him think.

Aphelios was playing at the balcony later that evening and Sett snuck up to him only to then wrap his arms around his slender waist and kiss the side of his face. He swayed their bodies in the May breeze and Aphelios was leaning against his chest, humming the tune he had been playing.

"Do ya wanna marry when ya're older, Phel?", he whispered all of a sudden.

His boyfriend silenced for a moment, a small one only, and eventually firmly said yes.

"Do you think", Sett gulped, still swinging to an inaudible melody, and before he could finish his question, Aphelios had turned around and grabbed his face, "That we will?"

He looked at the younger man with his brows furrowed and nodded. Their movements had come to a halt and it was silent except for their rhythmic breathing and the irrhythmic noises of the city beneath them. Aphelios palms on his cheeks were warm and he was pulled further down by them so that he could place a chest kiss on Sett's lips.

"I would love nothing more than spending the rest of my life by your side, Settrigh."

Their life in that shared space wasn't much different from how they had spent it before and Sett was so grateful and happy that even when summer and autumn and winter passed, their love didn't cease. If anything, it grew with every month that they came up with new ways of adorning their everyday rituals and their home. They took vigorous care of the plants Sett's mother had given them and decorated the painted walls with framed pictures of everything dear to them. Pictures of the Christmas fair, the opera house, some of the elderlies they cared for, Alune's grave, his momma, the sea and the moon from their balcony. Aphelios playing the violin, Aphelios in a suit before a performance, Aphelios laughing at Sett behind the camera, Aphelios pursing his lips against his cheek in front of it. The photo album Sett had made for Aphelios full of pictures of their life so far for their second anniversary proudly sat on the shelf next to the wardrobe.

Their home reeked of their love and Sett had never been more content.

4

Sometime after their fourth anniversary, Aphelios had his final exams and when he came home, he fainted. It wasn't anything serious, Aphelios assured him but considering all the weight he had lost throughout the exam period, Sett was worried sick. Aphelios went to see a doctor and the blood tests didn't give him anything to worry about.

Aphelios graduated and instead of looking for a new job that he had so eagerly anticipated, his love spent his free days at home. Sett came home after his own shift to Aphelios usually asleep already. Then he quit his job and eventually the orchestra and Sett was losing his mind. He hadn't heard him play the violin in far too long and his worries kept him awake at night while Aphelios seemed to never sleep enough.

Something was different and Sett wasn't able to pinpoint it. For a few days, he had reoccurring and fearful thoughts about his boyfriend maybe having found someone new, having fallen for someone else but when he asked him and Aphelios cried, saying that he could never love anyone like he loved Sett, he knew that it wasn't that. Seeing him cry was reason enough for his worry to make him restless. In all their years together, Aphelios had rarely ever done it. He only teared up when he was too overwhelmed by everything running through that beautiful mind of his.

He talked to his mother, his friends, but no one was able to figure out what was wrong either. Aphelios had talked to her a few days ago, his momma had said. He had mentioned that he truly loved Sett and was unbelievably grateful for everything they had done for him. She had jokingly asked if that was a farewell and Aphelios had shaken his head quickly, stumbling.

"No", she recited his words, "I couldn't live without Settrigh."

As Sett arrived back home to his Aphelios fast asleep that evening, he kissed his icy forehead and whispered: "I couldn't live without you either, moon."

  
  



	4. Part IV - Separated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If you were to die", he had exhaled deeply and maybe even a bit shakily, "I- not good with cheesy things, ya know? But I wouldn' be sure where to go. You're my moonlight after all."
> 
> Or, Settrigh fears a life without Aphelios.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Suicide  
> Please read the tags very carefully and only read if you are comfortable!
> 
> While part 3 was my favourite one to write, this one was my least favourite to write - well, that's not true, it was just a chapter that took me quite long, a lot of research and a lot of going back and forth.  
> Enjoy!

1

At some point, Aphelios had asked Sett what he would do if Aphelios were to die. It had been seemingly out of nowhere, only a few weeks ago. Sett had thought he had asked because of Alune. Because she had been fine and then suddenly dying and he had found himself more lost than ever.

Sett had shifted from his laying position on his back into a sitting one to watch Aphelios standing in front of their closet. His hair had been messy and his eyes tired, hidden underneath dark strands and furrowed brows. He had been looking at himself in the mirror. Sett had eventually patted the space next to him on the bed and Aphelios who had seen the notion in the reflection had turned around and crawled onto the bed until he had been kneeling next to Sett's thighs.

"C'mere", Sett had muttered and gestured Aphelios to inch forward a bit more so that Sett could wrap one of his arms around his tender frame.

He had looked at his boyfriend with a somewhat blurry, indescribable expression. Of course, he had had hunches, nightmares, of a life without Aphelios but he had never followed any of those trains of thoughts further. There had been no point in imagining his love, his moonlight, dead.

"I love you, moon, with all of my humble and awkward person", Sett had told him and shifted.

He had been facing Aphelios entirely then and cupped his face gently with calloused palms, his worried eyes searching, examining his pale cheeks. Sett had thought that he had hardly changed ever since they had met.

"If you were to die", he had exhaled deeply and maybe even a bit shakily, "I- not good with cheesy things, ya know? But I wouldn' be sure where to go. You're my moonlight after all."

Aphelios had shivered underneath his soothing cupping and ended up with his face buried in the crook of Sett's neck. There he had cried. Silently and dryly but Sett had sensed the shudders and trembles of his suddenly so fragile-looking body and he had simply held and kissed him unto he had started to yawn.

2

Settrigh remembered his sudden words when he was listening to Aphelios' mother cry. She was standing there, a few metres and people away from him, and holding onto her husband as she was sobbing. He felt his own mother's body pulse with shudders and tears next to him and he remembered how Aphelios had asked him what he would do. He was standing there and didn't know what he was doing, had been doing since he had found Aphelios' in their bathroom.

He had been standing there at the doorframe and staring at the blood and paleness, limp limbs, and staring some more because he hadn't been able to tear his eyes off the man he had wanted to marry. It had taken Settrigh a while to find the strength to call an ambulance and when he had spoken and explained, his voice hadn't sounded like his own but like somebody else's who just had happened to host his body.

Next, he had called his momma and said that Aphelios was dead. She had told him to quit playing games and he had said that he had killed himself. Then he had thrown up and his mother had cried. She had been crying a lot ever since then and Settrigh doubted she had cried that much even when his father had left. Maybe because it had been pain that she had had to overcome herself, something she hadn't had to see anyone else bear. Especially not her son.

Aphelios once had told Settrigh that he never wanted to be buried as his sister had. It had been what their parents had wanted and after all that had happened, he had never wanted them to make a decision for him again. Settrigh had hummed and said that he was lucky that they both would die long after his parents had died and that old and weak Settrigh would then take his ashes and spread them near the Opera so that he would stay close to the music even after he had died.

Settrigh hadn't had any say in regards to Aphelios' burial. Aphelios' parents had come and said that they would let him be buried in his hometown next to his sister and Settrigh had screamed at them that they couldn't take _his_ Aphelios so far away from him whereupon they had said that if he had been happy enough to stay near him he wouldn't have killed himself. Settrigh had wanted to beat them up with all the strength he had left but his mother had sent him outside and he had sat in the drying grass of autumn and ripped it out until he had sobbed dryly.

So there they were, in Aphelios' hometown at the grave of his sister that his love and he had visited together once. The tombstone had been adjusted. "Akatsuki family grave", then "Alune" and below her name "Aphelios". Settrigh was angry because he had wanted to give him his last name so bad and Aphelios had always said how much he would love to let go of his family and be with Settrigh's instead. That he loved his mother and him so dearly and couldn't have asked for anyone better. Settrigh had believed him. Had believed him that he had made him happy.

No matter how much he despised his parents, he thought that they were right. He apparently hadn't been enough to keep Aphelios happy. He should have known the moment he had graduated and hadn't looked at him with that excited spark in his eyes. It had been what he had been wanting to do all along, had been working and practising so hard for and yet Aphelios had given up on all of it bit by bit. He had given up on life and Settrigh should have seen it coming, should have caught and held him. Should have told him that he loved him imperfectly and stupidly more often and should have kissed him in the same manner whenever he had had the chance.

Settrigh didn't say anything during the burial. He didn't have anything left to voice, had screamed at Aphelios' parents and into his pillow and punchbag for long enough for his anger to have been replaced by emptiness. His mother stroked his shoulder in an attempted comforting manner as he blankly said that he would go to the beach before their departure.

"I'll wait inside the car", she said quietly, huskily.

He merely nodded. It had been over three years since Aphelios and he had come here, since his love had taken him to this place to bare more of himself, to show Settrigh how much he trusted and liked him, but he remembered the path to the sand as he knew the back of his hand. He remembered how they had spent their weekend at the water and kissed and watched the sun go down, only a few hundred metres away from Aphelios' parents but it felt like oceans between them.

The air was salty, cold. The days had started to become shorter again. Winter would wash over them soon enough. It would be his first Christmas without Aphelios in four years. His eyes darted to the tiny box that he had been clasping ever since his shoes had touched the sand. He fumbled it out of his pocket and eventually with the lid. The ring was filigree. It would have been so beautiful on Aphelios' slender fingers, Settrigh had been sure of it.

He examined the metal and the three embedded jewels. Eventually, he clutched it shut and shoved it back into his pants. A sniffle came from him. He scrunched up his face and huffed, shook his head and huffed again. He was staring at the gray sky and the gray waves that were nothing like they had been when Aphelios and he had watched them. Their glistening shine was gone. It must have disappeared along with Aphelios. Ceased to exist. Just gone. Settrigh thought that with the next spring it might return but Aphelios wouldn't.

Aphelios wouldn't return. With every new awakening every new morning, Settrigh forgot. He woke up and missed the warmth in their shared bed. He walked into their shared kitchen and missed his presence and the smell of coffee and whenever he would enter the bathroom he would stare at Aphelios' towels that he didn't dare to wash. Aphelios wouldn't use them ever again but he couldn't bear the thought of washing away those last remains of his love. He had used them that day only, hadn't he? Had wrapped them around his tender body and kissed Settrigh so tenderly and weakly as he had been standing at the counter. How could he just take them and make all of that disappear? Hadn't he lost enough of Aphelios already?

Settrigh thought about throwing the ring into the ocean but he didn't. He was scared of losing that piece of him as well. He stood there a while until he sank to the sand and carded his fingers through it. He thought that it really hurt and that he really missed Aphelios. And he thought that he didn't know what to do, where to go with himself, his life. He was aware of his stable job, his loving mother, great colleagues and friends. He was aware that besides Aphelios there was so much fulfilling in his life and yet, without Aphelios everything seemed worthless. He had come to love his life by someone else's side, had loved their cheesy romance and the love they had shared so intimately, stupidly and perfectly in its imperfection.

How was he supposed to continue without being woken up by his morning wriggles and his cupid bow glistening in the morning sun? Without his snickers and the way he rolled his eyes and still attempted to blow his hair out of his face although it had grown way too long and heavy throughout the years? Without Settrigh spending free mornings braiding his soft hair and massaging his scalp the way Aphelios did it to him when he laid down on his lap? How was he supposed to continue, knowing that he would come home to the yawning and brutal emptiness of their once oozing-of-love home without his love anywhere to be seen? Never to be seen again.

He feared the silence of stepping back inside, looking at his violin and knowing that his fingers would never clasp the bow again and play Clair De Lune. He feared seeing everything that Aphelios had once touched and now left behind that reminded him too much of his love. He feared the pain of waking up and he feared the pain of going to sleep alone. He feared looking into his colleagues' eyes who had all known Aphelios and he feared their commiserating words, being reminded of his absence every new day.

He feared a life without Aphelios.

3

"Alune wanted to kill herself."

Sett had paused the series and squinted his eyes at Aphelios' sudden remark. It hadn't been as sudden considering the thematic of the show but it had been random enough to surprise Sett if not alarm him a little.

"I thought she didn't believe she was dying?"

"Not at first. She got better. When she turned 15 and it came back she had a hunch that she wouldn't live another year. She once told me that she didn't want to live like this anymore and asked me to help her."

He had huffed humourlessly.

"She wanted me to help her kill herself. I couldn't and she hated me for it. I had no idea what it was like to die, she had said. Of course, I didn't."

Settrigh remembered those words when the autopsy report arrived. Pancreatic cancer. The same type as his sister. He wondered whether Aphelios had known, whether he had been dying without Settrigh noticing and whether he hadn't wanted to continue a life that was doomed to end so agonizingly slowly, so painfully. He wondered whether he had lied to him that day when the results of the blood tests had come in, whether he had wanted to _protect_ Settrigh from watching him fade away, become less Aphelios and more illness.

Then he wondered why Aphelios hadn't trusted him to deal with the cancer and his coming death. Why he hadn't trusted himself to fight and beat it. Why Aphelios had felt as though he had to go through all of that by himself. It pained him, thinking that he would have trusted Aphelios with all of his life decisions and Aphelios had killed himself without even considering whether Settrigh could be there for him, could support him, take away some of his pain. He had lied to him, had ended his life bit by bit until he had fully taken it and all Settrigh was left with were letters about truths he had never told him and all that empty space he couldn't set a foot into.

He left their flat to live with his mother for a while. He stood there with her in silence and stared at the same couch on which they had shyly touched and kissed one another until they had fallen over each other like hungry animals. Settrigh remembered their eager kisses and Aphelios' flushed cheeks with an intensity that hurt, ached, pulled at his deepest strings, took him apart by ripping out his insides with every breath he took.

Settrigh had never been a man of tears and more fists so his mother was hardly surprised by his daily studio visits and empty stares when he was sitting next to her and watching TV. He would have his legs pulled up and head resting on his propped up palm and stare through the screen more than at it. She could tell, could see the pain within his slow, unsteady glances and she worried for him. 

His colleagues did, too. Losing Aphelios was hard. Living without him was even harder. And acting as though he had the strength and the mind to live like he had done it before was the hardest. His boss had talked to him and explained that she understood that he had to not feel up to the challenge of the Hub. So she had assigned him to the apartment service for the following weeks. Settrigh performed his tasks quickly and quietly. Then he usually sat down in the breakroom and stared at his phone. He had never changed his wallpaper although merely thinking about looking at it made him ache.

It was a picture of Aphelios on their balcony. He had taken it this summer only. He was propped up against the railing with his head tilted upwards and eyes closed in bliss. The sun illuminated his skin so beautifully, so ethereally. The angle made it seem as though Aphelios himself was glowing and gleaming onto the world. His moon, so bright even during daylight.

Aphelios had enjoyed his work here. Settrigh remembered during their first date in the café that he had said he didn't like old people. Then he had got to know the elderlies from the Hub and he had tended them so adoringly that Settrigh couldn't help but adore him even more.

One of the women that used to visit the café regularly - Mrs. Jacobs - had fallen ill and therefore received her meals in her apartment. She recognized Settrigh the second he stepped past her with the tray in his hands.

"Nurse Settrigh", she greeted him coarsely.

He nodded at her with a light, polite smile and Mrs. Jacobs heaved herself back into a big armchair right beside the coffee table where she wanted to have her lunch.

Settrigh helped her to shift the magazines lying on the surface as she glanced up at him.

"I haven't seen Aphelios in a while."

Settrigh paused for a moment without returning her gaze before he tightened his grip around the stack of journals and set it on the edge of the table.

"When will he be returning?", Mrs. Jacobs then asked.

He considered, thought for a few moments. Mrs. Jacobs' husband had died before he had started here. They had only taken off the sign with their shared names in his first year as an apprentice and his clothes still hung in their closet. Settrigh thought about Aphelios' untouched clothes in the drawers at their home and he pressed his lips together. Whether she still missed her husband? Wished he was by her side again? Because Settrigh did every living second.

"He won't", he eventually said in a voice he didn't recognize as his own.

He had been having a hard time recognizing himself in general. Settrigh still didn't look back at Mrs. Jacobs while arranging the plate. He hurried, didn't want to talk about Aphelios, didn't want to have to explain why he wouldn't return, that he wouldn't ever do it. He didn't want to have even more people looking at him in pity because none of it brought Aphelios back. Nothing would so he didn't want to hear or see any of it.

"Did he quit?"

Settrigh stared at her soup. It was a chicken broth with noodles.

"He did. He finished his major in music pedagogy and was offered a spot at an Elementary school."

He placed the cutlery next to the bowl and straightened himself up. He felt nauseous and wanted to leave.

"That is wonderful. Give the man my regards. I thoroughly enjoyed his company."

Settrigh had, too.

"I will."

In the hallway, he pressed his lips together and sobbed dryly. He stayed there, hunched his back against the wall and shook until he could breathe again, part his lips without feeling the urge to scream and finished his rounds. Lately, he had been having those moments where his chest would restrict and he was left gasping for air. He knew that, theoretically, he was breathing, that there was indeed air filling his lungs, whereas it felt like a lot but breathing properly. He felt like dying. He didn't voice it because it sounded pathetic but he truly felt like dying with every second he had to spend without Aphelios.

Settrigh didn't like giving in to the sadness. He was old enough to be aware that life went on. The earth hadn't stopped turning when Aphelios had stopped breathing and it angered Settrigh. It angered him that he had to tend the same people who had known his Aphelios and act as though he didn't want to throw up and scream and bury his fists into every surface to make his chest stop hurting. It angered him that he wouldn't allow himself to cry as he craved to and, at the same time, that he wanted to cry in the first place. It angered him that Aphelios had so selfishly left him and that his parents had taken him away from him, blamed him for what had happened when it had been their genes. They were at fault that Alune had died and they were at fault that Aphelios had lived a life he hadn't desired for the most part until he had died because of them as well.

Settrigh was so angry and no matter how much he screamed and boxed until his knuckles were roughed up in the fabric of his handshoes, the anger didn't fade. 

3

His mother didn't urge him to go back to their flat. She had offered it, once, had muttered that she would be there for him in case he wanted to return and Settrigh had merely hummed and left for his room. There he had sat in front of his bed and stared at it and thought that he could never return to that place.

He did, however. One and a half months after Aphelios' burial, he found himself in the doorframe to their flat. He hadn't entered it since he had brought most of his clothes to his mother's place. There had been no need to do so.

The dresser stood there the same way it had when he had left. On top of it the framed pictures. Aphelios was on nearly every single one of them. Settrigh pressed his lips together and closed the door shut. His arms dangling on his sides were shaking. He was cold. The heating had been turned off for a while now and winter had started to paint the city dim gray and washy white.

Aphelios' coat hung at the wardrobe and Settrigh's arms ached from training when he reached for it. He pulled it off the hanger and stared at it closely. He stared at the seams and the fabric, the fur at the neck that Aphelios had despised and always taken off when he hadn't gone outside with Settrigh to walk around in winter partner look.

He ended with his nose buried in the fabric in a futile attempt to find any remains of Aphelios' scent in there. He had always smelled so sweet, so gentle in his arms and he hadn't sensed it in so long. He hadn't worn it a lot before his death. Settrigh felt stupid, pathetic for even attempting to find Aphelios' remains in a piece of clothing. He let the coat sink to the floor. His chest hurt. Breathing was hard. It truly was.

The door to their bedroom had been left open. He didn't remember whether it had been him but as he inched past it, his gaze fell onto the messy sheets of their bed. He hadn't made them yet that morning. Aphelios' nightshirt was laying there folded yet wrinkled. He remembered that Aphelios hadn't got ready with him that night as he had wanted to- What had he even wanted to do that Settrigh had not seen the truth in his eyes? How could he have believed him after all those years that he had never once lied to him?

Settrigh gritted his teeth and took a few, big steps towards the bed where he gripped Aphelios' shirt and dryly sobbed when he inhaled the scent of his shampoo. He nudged it with his nose as he held it tightly in between his palms as though it might fade like Aphelios had if he didn't keep it close enough. He thought about Aphelios' damp hair sometimes tickling his face when he had scooted closer to him in bed, nuzzling and embracing him, feigned complaints about his wet strands. Aphelios had snorted and rolled his eyes at them and retorted that Settrigh didn't have to eat him up if he minded his hair. And Settrigh had gnawed on his neck and tickled him until Aphelios had followed suit and they had shoved and pushed one another until either of them surrendered. Then they had kissed and Settrigh had covered his body in pecks and caresses unto they had fallen asleep.

It smelled exactly like him. Faded but like his Aphelios. He covered his face with the fabric and stayed still until his body quivered. It occurred to him that once the scent had dissolved completely, there would be nothing left of Aphelios. He wouldn't wear it again, wouldn't renew his essence stuck on that fabric. It would just be gone. Slowly but surely, everything vivid he had left of Aphelios would end up gone. The sheets would stop smelling like him, his pears in the fridge would spoil, probably have spoiled already, his towels would be washed sooner or later, bit by bit everything materialistic would die, too. He would have pictures left of him, videos on his phone. But when he would play them and listen to Aphelios' snickers and his voice and his singing and his violin, he would know that it was all that was left of him.

Settrigh eventually laid down in the bed. Aphelios would have playfully nudged him with his elbow at him still wearing his shoes but Settrigh hadn't bothered to take them off earlier and if it was what it took to bring him back, he would kick his dirty shoes against the sheets for the rest of the day. He would anger Aphelios just to have him return to him. Even if he hated him. Settrigh would rather live, having his love hate him but knowing that he was alive, alright, than not having him by his side anymore. He would want Aphelios happy even if it wasn't with him. He didn't care. Those words repeated inside his mind until he breathed them out against the shirt.

He had his legs pulled up. He knew he was staining the sheets. But then he cried and he couldn't stop because it hurt. It hurt so much and he couldn't even put it into words as he had never experienced a pain that pungent, that overwhelming. Settrigh cried into the fabric and inhaled desperately until his nose was too stuffed to even breathe anymore and his eyes burned from the tears. He pulled up his limps more tightly and waited for the tremors of his chest to dissipate. He didn't know for how long he stayed there on their bed but it had got dark by the time he pushed himself off the mattress. The shirt in his grip was wet but he took it with him, didn't let go of it. He wouldn't dare to.

The breeze on the balcony was freezing. He was standing there like he had done it when Aphelios had come back and told him that he had been low on iron. He had believed him. He had been so stupid for believing him. He couldn't blame himself, Settrigh thought somewhere in the back of his mind. How should he have known that Aphelios had lied? He had never done it before. Or maybe that was why he should have known. His mind was spinning and the cold of the wind made his damp cheeks burn.

He wiped them with the back of his rough hand and hissed. Then his gaze wandered up and he saw nothing but darkness. Clouds hung heavily, almost like a threat, over the city and he knew that tonight he wouldn't get to see the moon.

Sometimes, Aphelios had played Clair De Lune beneath the moonlight just for the cliché and Settrigh had laughed at the imagery but then taken pictures of him. He had always reminded him of an old oil painting with his skin so pale that it was illuminated by the moon and his eyes half-lidded in bliss. Hadn't it been enough? To keep him there. Just a little longer, just so that they could fight together what there was to fight? Settrigh would have done everything to make Aphelios well again. Why hadn't Aphelios trusted in him? Had he even known that Settrigh would stay with him until the end? Hadn't he told him often enough that he wanted to marry him, care for him and love and worship him until it was no longer only the two of them but maybe three or four? He had wanted it all with his Aphelios and Aphelios had said he would love that.

_I would love nothing more than spending the rest of my life by your side, Settrigh._

"I would've loved that, too."

4

Settrigh returned to his momma making pie. He was clasping the shirt when he approached her. She had been pushing the dough into the pan and Settrigh waited for her to turn around to him. Once she did with an earnest smile, saying "Where were you, dear?", Settrigh wrapped his arms around her slender frame and a moment passed before she returned the embrace. He had grown to tower over her and she always jokingly complained about how rude it was of him. But she was proud, happy to have her son grown and healthy and _alive_.

His mother carefully rubbed his back and whispered: "What is it, Settrigh?"

He hadn't told her he would visit their old place. She probably knew as Settrigh shuddered with his cheek pressed against the top of her head and suddenly cried. Settrigh couldn't recall a time he had last cried in front of his mother. Not once throughout the past month, he had let himself cry and now he couldn't help it. He had felt bad about not doing it, about not letting his mother see any of what he felt although she might have noticed it all along. He had felt bad about letting both of them suffer without ever giving his mother the chance to be there for him. He thought, it was what Aphelios had done before he had taken his life. He didn't want to do the same.

Settrigh felt his mother's grip tighten around him. He choked out a sob and after a while of them just standing there, he sensed the wetness of her tears against his shirt. She caressed his back no longer to only give him comfort. She needed it, too. She had loved Aphelios and above all, she loved her son. Settrigh knew how helpless she must have felt all along, losing himself in misery and the mourning of the man he had loved more than anyone before.

It was what he choked out, "I love him so much", before he hiccupped on a sob.

And his mother held him firmly and whispered: "I know you do."

"I wan' him back."

He knew how childish it sounded. Like a child that had lost his favourite stuffed animal underneath all the clutter in their room. Tidying up wouldn't give him his Aphelios back. He wasn't hidden underneath some clutter. It wasn't as simple and, yet, it was.

"I know, baby, I know."

Of course, she did. She must have since she had first held Settrigh after the ambulance had arrived.

Settrigh ended up rambling breathily and huskily that he needed him and that he didn't understand why, that he didn't know what to do , his mother whispered that she knew.

5

It started to snow a week after he had been to their flat. He returned and got Aphelios' violin. He would take it to his grave. Aphelios had already been buried somewhere so far away from everything he had loved and so close to everything he had loathed. Settrigh couldn't leave to live by his side so he would bring Aphelios pieces of what had brought him joy.

It had been two months and Settrigh had been crying more often. Sometimes it overwhelmed him out of nowhere and sometimes he looked at pictures and videos of Aphelios and let it happen. It didn't cure the tightness of his chest and it didn't ease the pain and yet, it felt like the only right thing to do.

His mother had offered to come with him but he had kissed her forehead and said that he needed to do this on his own. And she let him do it on his own because she loved and trusted him.

Settrigh was glancing at the violin on the passenger's seat. It was quiet let alone for the rustling of his car and the others around him, rushing over and past snow that had fallen. Next month, he would bring Aphelios his coat. He shouldn't freeze throughout New Year.

He had plans. He had plans for a new life that he knew he would abhor but there was no way out of it. That was what he thought when his eyes focused on the turning cars, the loud honking and shrill squeaking ringing in his ears. He didn't understand, had been thinking about his love.

When he did, Settrigh assumed that it was selfish. He found it really had to be. Because when the lights blinded his eyes and he felt his fingers twitch with the instinct to grip the wheel and turn his car to the side, he didn't do it. He thought about his momma who loved and trusted him and he thought about how he had loved and trusted Aphelios. By the time he wondered what his mother would do without him, the breath had been knocked out of his lungs.

No way out of a life without Aphelios, huh?

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate me.


	5. Part V - Distant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He stemmed his upper body into an upright position and glanced around only to find Aphelios standing at the foot of their bed in one of his sweaters. Aphelios, his pale and glistening and blushing love. Aphelios, whom he had seen die, dead, pale but differently and so cold. Aphelios, whose name had been utterly worthless on the stone and his body discarded and buried agonizingly far away from Sett. He was standing there in the light and acknowledged him with a vivid gaze out of not as vivid eyes. But he was alive [...]"
> 
> Or, Settrigh tries to save Aphelios.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyho and welcome to the first chapter after the big heartbreak! This one should make it at least a little better, I am really sorry. :((  
> I thank everyone who is actively reading, commenting and leaving kudos, it means so much to me. :)  
> I also wanted to add that critique is allowed, even wanted!  
> Have a wonderful day!  
> \- Lola
> 
> PS: My Twitter is @chaeyoongsao3 and I will soon be open to writing commissions! nwn

1

Sett opened his eyes and saw the gleaming gray light of an autumn morning. It took a moment for him to register where he was and what he had been dreaming that had his heart pumping with an intensity that blurred his vision and made him gasp for air.

"Sett?"

He inhaled so harshly that it hurt whereas he wasn't even sure if his chest hadn't been hurting all along. He stemmed his upper body into an upright position and glanced around only to find Aphelios standing at the foot of their bed in one of his sweaters. Aphelios, his pale and glistening and blushing love. Aphelios, whom he had seen die, dead, pale but differently and so cold. Aphelios, whose name had been utterly worthless on the stone and his body discarded and buried agonizingly far away from Sett.

He was standing there in the light and acknowledged him with a vivid gaze out of not as vivid eyes. But he was alive and Sett shifted and let out sounds he had never heard himself make as he got up and wrapped his arms around the frame of his love as though it would disappear if he didn't hurry. He buried his face in his hair and inhaled the scent of his shampoo. His lips hurt from how harshly he squeezed them together but he feared he might sob or scream if he parted them now. Sett held Aphelios dearly and tightly and Aphelios nudged his sides with his own arms, sinking into his embrace.

"What is it?", Aphelios muttered somewhere against his chest.

"I saw you die. I died"

His voice was strained and he had to clear his throat and shake his head several times until he managed to finish the sentence.

"I am not dead, Settrigh, and neither are you", he whispered firmly back.

Sett shook his head: "You aren't."

He wasn't. Aphelios wasn't dead, hadn't died, just as little as he had. He was alive, warm with his icy fingertips against Sett's back. It had felt so real. He had felt the lump in his throat, the utter emptiness and the anger, the screams scratching inside his throat, Aphelios' dead-cold skin when he had reached for him. He had felt the ocean breeze during his burial and had tasted the blood in his mouth when his shaky hands had let go of the steering wheel. All of it was so vibrant in his mind, unlike any dream he had ever had before.

Sett wanted to ask Aphelios how. How none of the things he had felt and seen were real, how he was still in his arms after what had felt like weeks, eternities, of living without him by his side. But he could barely open his mouth without the lump in his throat swelling, causing him to whimper and tighten his hold on Aphelios.

"It was only a dream", Aphelios had now closed his arms around his neck, tip-toeing so that his breath hit his collar and his hands would reach his shoulders and the hairs on his nape.

Aphelios caressed him and his hair, his scalp, shushed him, reassured him that he was alive. He would never want Sett to live without him, would never let him live through that pain.

_I couldn't live without you either._

2

Sett had a day off that day. When he looked at his phone and the date, he thought that it was odd because he couldn't remember whether he hadn't lived through that day before. Aphelios was at the doctor's to have his blood tests talked through. It was after he had fainted. His final exams had already passed.

It felt familiar. Every step that he took, every thought that came to his mind felt like a Deja Vu, a repetition of what he had experienced before, had dreamt about. His dream hadn't started with Aphelios' death. No. It must have started sooner but how could it be that he had imagined all the details in his dream so perfectly authentically? 

Sett was sitting on the couch of their shared flat and staring outside the window, trying to recall everything his mind let him remember. He recalled how Aphelios had come back in the evening and rarely talked, rarely smiled and the next day Sett had left for work and returned to Aphelios saying his shift had ended sooner. They had sometimes left for work together and at some point, Aphelios had told him that he had quit the orchestra and his job. The applications had begun to dust in the drawers of his desk. Eventually, someday after weeks and weeks of seeing Aphelios cease to exist, he had killed himself. He had had pancreatic cancer. Sett had read the autopsy report. 

Sett recalled those things as though they were events in a book or a TV series. Factually, distantly because they weren't real, did not affect his life or his Aphelios. And yet, he couldn't help but think that they, in fact, were real.

Sett prepared dinner in the afternoon and kept it warm in the oven as he expected Aphelios' return. He stepped onto the balcony behind Sett and wrapped his arms around him and Sett wondered whether he would see the expression he had dreamed of if he were to turn around now.

"How was the appointment?", Sett muttered the dreamed words with a content hum as he brought his hands up to cup Aphelios' on his abdomen.

His fingers were just as cold as they had been in the morning when he had hugged Sett and told him it had been a dream only.

Aphelios stayed quiet for a moment. Sett remembered thinking that he had merely enjoyed the fading warmth of September and Sett's proximity. Now, however, he wondered whether what he had seen in his sleep had been more of a foreshadowing than a simple, meaningless figure wearing the face of his biggest fears.

Ultimately, Aphelios parted his lips against his shoulder blades: "I am a little low on iron. Nothing to worry about."

Sett felt his brows twitch and he was quick to turn around in Aphelios' embrace. He put his hands on his cheeks and tilted his head until they were merely a few inches apart. His face was dim. In the evenings, they never got to see the sun. Sett let his gaze skim across his eyes, tried to estimate whether he was just anxious because of his dream or whether there was any dishonesty within his words, his tired features.

In his dream, Aphelios had been sick. Cancer. The same type that his sister had had. But what were the odds? Besides, how was he supposed to blatantly ask Aphelios right there and then whether he was dying? He would huff and ask whether Sett was alright, where that notion had come from. No. His Aphelios wasn't dying.

" 'M so glad you're alright", Sett ended up muttering.

He leaned down, placed a chaste kiss on Aphelios' lips, his thumbs rubbing fond circles into his cheeks, and guided him inside to have dinner. Sett watched him closely, his eyes would always flicker to him as though he still wasn't able to grasp that the imagined weeks he had spent without Aphelios had not been real and his boyfriend didn't mention it because he probably knew.

Sett kept his watchful eye for a week or so until he started to discard the events, dismissed them as mere imagination and continued to live his shared life with Aphelios.

That was until he came home one day and saw Aphelios asleep on the couch. It occurred to him rather painfully that he had seen that image before. One of his mother's knitted blankets fully wrapped around Aphelios' slender frame, his arms and legs pulled up and head slightly dipped upwards as he breathed through his mouth. He looked peaceful. That was what he had once thought. At some other point in time. Sett had seen him and thought that he had looked so peaceful in his paleness.

He sat beside him on the couch and carefully stroked his covered ankles. The last time he recalled doing it, Aphelios had woken up and he did it now, too. Sett leaned in and kissed his cold cheek and when he, later on, asked him whether he had been sent home earlier again, his boyfriend shook his head.

"I quit."

Sett froze. When he had contemplated whether his oh-so authentic dream had been more than just that, he realized that there was no reason in their world for Aphelios to quit his job or the orchestra. That he was happy. And if he wasn't sick, why would he want to let go of the life they had built up and adorned so beautifully with all their habits of love and adoration? Sett had assured himself that it just couldn't be true because unless Aphelios was already physically dying, he wouldn't follow suit emotionally. Yet, Aphelios did it again, just like Sett had watched him do it before. He said his farewell to his surroundings, things he used to love, people whose company he used to enjoy.

"You intend on quitting orchestra, too", Sett said after a long pause of neither of them looking at each other.

The last time Aphelios had told him those exact words, he had been shocked. They had fought because Aphelios had only hardly replied to Sett's questions about what he intended on doing now, whether he was sure, insane to think Sett's salary would be enough to make a living for the two of them.

Sett had now torn his eyes away from their hands resting on each their own laps and was looking Aphelios in the face. It was turned away from him and wearing an expression that Sett had never seen before. Aphelios felt caught. It came to him that he had never seen that face before because they had never had any secrets from one another. Suddenly, apparently, they did.

"Aphelios", Sett said his name, almost urgently, and reached for one of Aphelios' hands.

He pulled it away. His head was still bent.

"I need you to talk to me about what's goin' on", Sett attempted again.

This time, he didn't try to touch Aphelios. He sat next to him and looked him in his averted face while his love seemed to inch, slip further away with every passing second.

"Are you sick?"

The corners of his mouth twitched. Sett thought, they had always been what had exposed him. His oh so revealing lips, only parting in truths he chose cautiously yet consistently. Now they were closed and the truth still dripped from their corners.

"Is it cancer?"

Aphelios' mouth jittered. Then he slid the blanket off his shoulders and got up abruptly. Sett looked after him. It was cancer. It hit him, suddenly and painfully, that what he had dreamed had either been a horrible foreshadowing of something he had feared, if not consciously but sub-consciously during each and every one of his living moments, or reality. A distant reality which he had lived through and seen Aphelios and eventually himself die in.

Sett blankly stared into the room and then at Aphelios who had disappeared onto the balcony. He saw his silhouette through the white curtains, dim and faint, already half-gone. It couldn't be true. Sett wished it wasn't. Aphelios hadn't replied but Sett knew him too well to claim his silence had been a denial to his statement. The opposite. It had confirmed it.

He sensed himself get up through the sudden emptiness. He clasped the blanket. His house slippers flapped against the flooring and Aphelios' shoulders twitched at the sound. Sett remembered how he had approached Aphelios for the first time at the elevator back then and how he had hardly been able to see him with the lights turned off. The light of their living room shone dimly onto the balcony, onto Aphelios' back. He could see his collarbones through the fabric of his loose shirt. It wasn't one of Sett's.

"Phel-", Sett said quietly, then, "Moon."

Aphelios didn't turn around but Sett didn't need him to. He slid his palms across the blanket until he could place it on his love's thin shoulders. He let his hands rest there, loosely and carefully as though Aphelios was a wild animal that would startle and run away at any sudden movement. But Aphelios wasn't an animal and Sett wasn't strange to him. Four years. Four years had passed since they had agreed to spend their lives by the other's side and yet, Aphelios had decided to start lying now. When he was dying. It hit Sett that he had seen Aphelios kill himself before but he hadn't seen whether he would have survived the cancer.

He realized that he might be able to stop Aphelios from taking his own life but he had no way of saying with certainty that his life wouldn't be taken by his illness.

"Talk to me."

Sett muttered and squeezed his boney shoulders subtly.

"Please."

"How did you know?", Aphelios asked instead of answering him directly.

His tone was cold. He had never spoken to him in such a way. Not even when they had fought.

Sett fumbled with his words. How was he supposed to make Aphelios understand that he had seen all of this happen before, that the dream he had had a few weeks ago had shown him what would happen? It sounded crazy merely in his thoughts. Voicing it would make him look like a madman.

"You remember the dream I had?", Sett said quietly, attempted warmly, "The one where ya died."

He felt Aphelios gulp by the clasp on his shoulders. Next, he nodded.

"I didn' realize I was so scared of losing ya and I've been- just kinda- lookin' at everything you do and I didn' recognize you."

It wasn't the whole truth, whereas, in hindsight, Aphelios had been acting different lately. How hadn't he noticed the first time? He faintly remembered that he had asked himself that exact same question before, after Aphelios had been gone. Why hadn't he noticed? That hadn't been a dream. No. He had been through this before but differently. Differently only because he hadn't been oblivious to his lie this time. He had acted differently so the course of things had changed. It sounded ridiculous. Settrigh had to have gone nuts. Maybe that dream had taken more of a toll on him than expected. But how else would he have been able to know?

Aphelios' face was still turned away from him. Sett saw his dusky hair and his dusky shudders and he stared at him until he realized that Aphelios was sick. It was funny because he had said it out loud before and yet, only now that he was staring at his love who had never felt farther away, more distant, he realized that he was sick for real. Cancer. Out of all things fucking cancer. He cursed quietly.

He saw the twitch in Aphelios' face and Sett pressed his lips together. As they stood there, he realized another thing. Aphelios was dying and he knew that. Wasn't that why he had killed himself? Because he had been dying anyway and the pain of it would have been too great to bear for either of them. So he had rather ended his life before the pain would have lasted all through their futile attempts to save him. But how could Aphelios have known that he wouldn't be saved? He hadn't even tried, had he?

"What do you intend on doing?", Sett eventually spoke through the darkness.

It was cold but his hands were warm nevertheless, holding Aphelios by his shoulders just loosely enough so that he could rip himself away if he wanted to. Sett wouldn't keep him from leaving. How could he? He had seen him die before and he doubted anything could compare to that ache.

Aphelios didn't answer for a while. Sett didn't know for how long they were standing there. He heard the cars rustling and music sounding from the apartments around them. Then the sound of Aphelios' lips parting.

"Nothing."

Sett remembered that he had cried, had sobbed and gasped for breath for if only he could have heard Aphelios' voice again. And here he was hearing it and his tone darted through his chest like daggers. The ones that Aphelios, when they had got to know each other, had so desperately tried to avoid he was now letting free. For the first time in all their years, Sett thought that Aphelios wanted to hurt him. With his words and his actions. Wanted him to dislike him, leave him even. He was trying to push him away.

Sett shook his head although Aphelios couldn't see it. His brows crumpled and he muttered "no"s.

"There are treatments, Aphelios", he said seriously.

He wanted to squeeze Aphelios' shoulders but he didn't dare to. He was scared Aphelios might shake his hands off then.

Sett's heart ached with the scoff Aphelios eventually let out. Aphelios didn't scoff. No. His Aphelios wanted no harm, having experienced so much himself. He wasn't even dead yet and still, Sett felt as though with every word he spoke, Aphelios was slipping further and further away from his embrace, his desperate clasp because he wanted, _needed_ , him alive so bad.

"How could I forget? They saved Alune after all", Aphelios' voice sounded harshly.

Sett shook his head again. They hadn't saved Alune. He was right. But he couldn't say with certainty that he wouldn't make it. Why was he giving up on life when he hadn't even _tried_ yet? How could he give up on their life, on Sett, so easily? In his despair, it upset Sett. He couldn't even help how he clenched his jaw, his lips quivering as he parted them.

"How do you know you will die? You haven't tried it. _We_ haven't", he quickly retorted and Aphelios' shoulders shuddered with his condescending chuckle.

Sett stared at his nape, the clasp of his necklace, in disbelief and let out a scoff. Next, he tightened his grip on his shoulders and turned Aphelios so that he was facing him. He would no longer talk about this to the back of his head, talk about his love's _life_ this impersonally. Aphelios might be uncomfortable but this was affecting both of them. He looked Aphelios in his averted eyes and frowned in building up frustration.

"Do you even want to live?"

Sett regretted his harsh words the moment they had slipped past his lips and at the same time he was tired of Aphelios not reacting, letting him feel the pain all on his own without participating, acting as though this wasn't about him but someone they didn't know.

He saw how Aphelios moved a hand up to nudge against Sett's wrist but he didn't think about letting loose now. If Aphelios wanted to die, he should tell him right then and there. He had a right to know. He was his boyfriend, after all, had wanted to be his fiance, his husband. He had wanted to be with Aphelios in any way that there was. Wasn't that enough to make him want to try and live? If only for a few more months? Wasn't that worth it?

"Let go of me", Aphelios muttered.

He couldn't see his eyes below his batted lashes and it was so dark and cold and how could he ever do something against his will? Sett let go as he had been asked to and Aphelios moved around him.

He couldn't just avoid it like that, Sett thought. They had to talk about this, had to decide what to do, how to continue. He couldn't see Aphelios die again. He remembered his pale limps and the cold of his skin and how his mother had told him to quit joking when he had called her. How was he supposed to tell her that he had died again? He had known and Aphelios had still died. How could he live knowing that he might have been able to save him?

"No, Aphelios", Sett pleaded, "Please, Phel."

He had swiftly turned around and followed him inside. Aphelios had carelessly dropped the blanket and Sett shuffled to pick it up and hurry behind him.

"Please, I can't see you die."

Sett didn't recognize his voice when he said it. It was so coarse, so breathy all of a sudden and he felt like he couldn't breathe. He knew what it felt like to lose Aphelios and he feared it, feared the sleepness nights and the emptiness in their flat, their bed. He feared a life without Aphelios so much, it tore him apart.

He stared at Aphelios' figure and he wanted him to turn around. He needed to see his face, needed him to tell him that he wouldn't die, that he would try for him, for them, that he loved him because Sett loved him so much.

Aphelios eventually stood still. His hands were in front of his body. Sett thought he had to be fumbling.

"You don't have to."

Aphelios left the same night.

3

Aphelios had left and then he had been gone. Out of reach. Disappeared. Settrigh tried to call him, tried to reach out to anyone who had known Aphelios. He hadn't wanted him to leave. He would have stayed through all of this with him. Of course, he would have so how could Aphelios ever doubt that?

"He doesn't want to be saved", his mother had said one evening when Settrigh had kissed her goodbye.

He had stilled and looked at her and asked why. Why wouldn't he want to be saved when there was even the slightest possibility that it might work?

She then had shaken her head and brushed his hair out of his tired face: "Some people just don't."

Settrigh hadn't understood. As he stared at Aphelios' grave a few months later how he had done it before, he still didn't. But he understood that he had failed. Despite not believing in fate or a God, there was no other explanation to him than that he was chosen to try and save his love. That Aphelios wasn't supposed to die and that it was on him to save him. He had pushed Aphelios too far. He had pushed Aphelios away with his despair. It must have scared him to think that Settrigh would suffer like that if he were to leave so he had tried to make Settrigh hate him again.

The next time, he would make it right. He would show Aphelios that he could live without him, that he _could_ leave him and Settrigh would survive, but that he shouldn't. That he should attempt and crave to live as Settrigh did. He would be a better man, a better boyfriend, better for Aphelios. He would make Aphelios live.

4

Sett was shaking when he woke up. He had expected the pain of dying this time, had felt it before whereas it hadn't been any less painful. It made him wonder whether Aphelios had been in just as much pain when he had died the last time. All by himself, so far away from Sett.

He heaved himself up and heard Aphelios' voice saying his name. He stood where he had stood before in the clothes he had worn before, looking at Sett in the same manner as before. Sett inhaled a deep breath. He remembered his cold and harsh words and how he had told him to let go. If he would let him touch him now? Of course, he would. Nothing had happened yet.

Sett looked at him and his brows twitched and eyes stung but he gestured him to come closer and held him tightly. He thought, he had to start now. If he wanted to save Aphelios, he had to start now already. His nose nudged the area where his pale neck flowed into pale shoulders and kissed him tenderly.

"I know ya're nervous 'bout the results", Sett's voice sounded as raspy as it had when he had told him that he had seen him die.

He had to clear his throat and inhale the scent of Aphelios' shampoo some more.

"But whatever the result is", he moved one of his hands from Aphelios' back to his face and tenderly cupped it as he looked him in the eyes, "I'm here and I won' go anywhere."

Aphelios looked back at him through tired eyes and Sett wondered whether he had felt it already. That he was sick. Whether he had recognized the symptoms and known all along. How had Sett not thought about that possibility? How had he never looked up the symptoms when he had first told him about Alune? It angered him to think that he could have avoided all of this from the very beginning. But he was back and it had to go differently now. He had already changed the course of events.

Aphelios eventually squinted those tired eyes lightly: "I know."

And Sett contemplated whether he could tell him that he loved him and when he deemed it appropriate, he did and Aphelios said he did, too.

Sett cleaned through their house with the TV running in the background and eventually made dinner. The last two times, he had received Aphelios on the balcony and he had been turned away from him. That Sett couldn't see his face must have prompted Aphelios to lie. This time, he would sit there next to him and only avert his eyes as needed to make him feel comfortable enough.

He knew at about which time he would be back so he played one of Aphelios' favourite classical assortments and sat on the couch with the blanket he had put on Aphelios' shoulders in an attempt to keep him warm, to keep him close, before Aphelios had discarded it so coldly. He wouldn't make him run away again.

Aphelios arrived later than before and Sett had got restless, thinking he had already done wrong, when he heard the clinking of the keys outside their door. He was the one walking up to Aphelios this time. He wrapped his arms around him just as he was about to slip out of his shoes and told him that he had been worried, he hadn't texted him.

His love's body was cold from the evening breeze and his cheeks red in their paleness. Sett cupped and rubbed them with his thumbs and he saw that Aphelios had cried. He hadn't seen it in his eyes before, maybe because of the dimness, maybe because he hadn't looked for it. Aphelios kept his eyes slightly averted from him.

"I am sorry", Aphelios eventually muttered, "Subway delay."

Sett's brows crumpled at the sound of the lie and he shook his head lightly, kissing his forehead.

"It's okay", he whispered and repeated.

He held Aphelios' head before he took his jacket and hung it up while Aphelios neatly placed his shoes next to the other pairs. As he was kneeling and arranging them, Sett looked down at him, his hands tight on the jacket, and asked about the results of the blood tests.

Aphelios' hands on his shoes stilled, Sett saw it, and he thought for a moment like he had done it before. Sett squatted beside him before he could speak.

"Whatever it is, I am here", he didn't dare to hold Aphelios' shoulder in fear he might shake off his hand, "I told you, I wouldn't go anywhere."

He noticed the frown on Aphelios' face and he parted his lips and let out tiny sounds of attempted words.

"I'm just a little low on iron", he eventually shook his head and heaved himself up.

He hadn't said it with the ease and amusement about Sett's seriousness it would have required for him to believe Aphelios. He carefully reached for his wrist and looked up at him.

"Phel", he mumbled, "moon."

Aphelios' head dipped and his gaze fell onto Sett. It was a new, unfamiliar expression that Sett hadn't seen before.

He licked his lips and examined him with squinted eyes: "It isn't iron, is it?"

"I know you."

Aphelios gaped at him for a little longer and the corners of his mouth twitched in that revealing manner and his brows followed until he looked so miserable that it pained Sett. He tugged at his hand gently and Aphelios understood and lowered himself against Sett's embrace.

Sett didn't see his face this time either when he asked what it was. Aphelios stayed quiet for a while. Then he shifted. Sett widened his eyes, felt his heart throbbing against his ribcage because he feared, was so scared, he might have done it again. Might have gone too far and pushed his love away. But Aphelios merely reached for his backpack and handed Sett a paper. He rubbed his own cheek and inhaled as though he was about to cry. Sett would always recognize the sounds and expressions he made when he was about to.

He glanced at Aphelios with a light frown before his eyes wandered to the sheet in his hands. It was one containing the results of a cancer screening. He hadn't known that Aphelios had already been to a clinic, had already been forwarded to be screened. Aphelios had known about the possibility for longer. He hadn't told Sett because he wanted to be sure it was cancer. And when he had got the confirmation, he had hidden it from him completely. That was how it all had ended.

Sett looked at the letter and the words that described what the autopsy report had revealed. Pancreatic cancer. Stage III. It was confined to the pancreas whereas further down it said it had spread to nearby lymph nodes and couldn't be removed surgically anymore. Radiation or chemotherapy was the recommended course of action and Aphelios was invited to an appointment to discuss the clinical stage. Sett didn't understand most of the things written there. They didn't make much sense and although he had read it before, had even _said_ it before, that it was cancer, reading it again still hurt.

It hurt and what hurt even more was the way Aphelios sat in front of him. He had his fingers interlaced on his kneeling thighs and he was looking down at them. He didn't even dare to glimpse upwards at Sett. He probably couldn't bear seeing the pain in his eyes, the shame of having Sett love him only to then reveal to him that he was dying. It was the first time that it occurred to Sett that Aphelios might have felt guilty as well. But Sett had known about his sister before and he had not cared about whether Aphelios might suffer the same fate as her because he had fallen for him in every imperfect and stupid way that there was and he would stay with him imperfectly and stupidly until whatever end there was awaiting them.

Sett stared at the letter, then Aphelios for a few moments longer. He had thought about how to make Aphelios be honest with him for months and yet, he had never been able to come up with the right words to say once he was.

Eventually, he put the paper down and reached for Aphelios' shoulders. He held them as loosely as he had on the balcony the last time and whispered his name.

Aphelios' eyes met his and Sett thought about all those times within the last four years that they had looked each other in the eyes full of love and affection and desire. He also thought about how his eyes had seemed less vivid than they had all those months before and they did now, too.

Sett wanted to say that this was horrible but also okay. That they got this, would get through this. What Aphelios wanted to do, whether he intended on going to that appointment, whether he intended on _living_.

_He doesn't want to be saved._

He shook his head lightly. If Aphelios didn't want to be saved, he wouldn't have told Sett. Or had he just pushed him into telling him again? He had lied again, after all. Maybe he wouldn't have told him this time either. Maybe he still didn't want to be saved, didn't want to live through the agony of dying and letting Sett watch him die that he had gone through before. If he didn't want to live, that was his decision. But whether Sett would stay with him through this wasn't something Aphelios could just decide on his own. Sett would always choose in his favour.

Sett failed to find the right words as he stared into Aphelios' eyes so he merely slid his hands down to his shoulder blades and pulled him close. His love sank against his chest and he caressed his back until it trembled lightly. He tightened his hold, tossed the letter away and let him inch onto his lap. Aphelios' legs felt boney against his waist and he felt his spine and tailbone when he lifted him up. Aphelios didn't cry nor said anything at all. Sett shushed him softly nevertheless as though he needed the comfort and sat with him on the couch.

The music was still playing as he felt Aphelios' heaving chest against his own. His body was warming up. He was alive. Aphelios was still alive and Sett would keep him that way. He would keep him close and warm and alive and he would marry him. He would take Aphelios' hand by the aisle and kiss him after exchanging vows. He would carry him into their flat and make love to him and stay by his side through whatever Aphelios was afraid of because he loved him. He loved him so much and he would be better now.

Sett remembered how badly he had wished for Aphelios' warmth and his scent after he had been gone. He buried his face in the crook of his neck, pressed his nose against the soft skin. He sensed Aphelios' hand gripping his shirt lightly and he thought that he didn't want to be without him. Never again.

At some point, Sett shuddered lightly and then he cried and it was Aphelios who held his shoulders and face momentarily.

"We'll make it through this", Sett susurrated breathily.

Aphelios wiped his cheeks with his palm and kissed the dampness. He didn't reply to Sett's repetitive mumbling, his tiny words of attempted encouragement, his "I got you"s and his "I'm here"s although he was the one crying. But Sett didn't need him to. As long as he wouldn't leave him again.

Sett held Aphelios' hand during dinner. They rarely spoke but that was okay. They would, eventually, find their pace and things would go back to normal. At least as normal as they could get. Sett was certain of it. As long as he was by Aphelios' side and he by his, honest and stupidly and imperfectly loving one another, they would find a way out of this.

5

The next day, Sett kissed Aphelios' forehead and went to work and in the evening, Sett carefully asked him what he intended on doing, whether he wanted to do anything. He didn't use the same judgemental and shocked tone as he had used before but spoke calmly and stroked Aphelios' knuckles in his clasp.

Aphelios' gaze was directed to their balcony. The breeze coming from the open glass door was cold and Sett had wrapped them both into that knitted blanket of theirs with Aphelios between his thighs. He wanted to be mindful about this, wanted to choose the right words and convey the right feelings so that Aphelios wouldn't take another step back, away from him.

"If you wan' me to, I could come with you to that appointment."

He watched his pale face and the shadows his lashes threw onto his just as pale cheeks. Sett watched them flicker with his blinking and flicker with how he averted his eyes from the dimness outside.

"I don't want to go", he then spoke distantly.

Sett wasn't sure if Aphelios was aware that his words equalled him saying that he would die. He wasn't sure whether Aphelios knew that refusing treatment would lead to him slowly but surely disappearing like he had done it before, but differently, more painfully, less quickly. He also wasn't sure whether Aphelios wasn't trying to shock and hurt him, push him away again.

He felt his heart ache but reminded himself to stay calm, to not give up on this repetition yet. He could still change Aphelios' mind with time although Sett didn't know how much they had. He would find a way. He had to. He had died to have another shot, another chance to save his love.

Sett's "I understand" came as a surprise to Aphelios. Sett could tell by the way the corners of his mouth jittered in their usual revealing manner and his gaze went back out of the window, less focused now.

"We could still-", he exhaled shakily and cleared his throat, "y'know, go there and ask how that will affect you. If you don' want treatment, I won't force you. But I wanna know."

Sett shook his head and placed a gentle hand on Aphelios' chest to press him against his own. He sensed Aphelios' heart in his ribcage, how it thudded and hammered and the tightness in his throat when he gulped.

"I wanna know what's gon' happen to you."

Sett feared Aphelios might inch away but he stayed in his embrace against his broad chest. His eyes were closed. Sett thought, lately, he had seemed too tired to keep them open. If it was the cancer? If he was starting to feel it? He was too afraid to ask.

"I am going die", Aphelios eventually retorted without opening his eyes.

Sett glanced into his pale face. He moved the fingers against his chest intuitively, brushed the fabric and the bit of revealed skin. He caressed and held Aphelios through the blatancy and distance of his words and breathed carefully. He knew Aphelios could feel all of it, their bodies were too close for him not to.

"I know."

He breathed those words against Aphelios' hair, watched the strands shiver underneath his words and placed his other palm on Aphelios' abdomen. Like that, they both stayed for a few moments until Sett spoke again.

"I know. But I wanna know how. When. Like-", he heaved out a humourless chuckle, "I don't wanna wake up alone one day."

Sett sensed the way Aphelios' lips pursed, parted, wanted to reveal more words that would cause Sett's heart to sink lower and lower until it would dangle at his heels, tripping over it with each step he took.

"I guess I can't avoid that. But at least I'll know when to say goodbye."

His love stayed still and quiet and so far away and fragile in his arms and Sett waited and waited for him to speak in fear that he might never. That he might just change the topic again, might get up and run away. Sett buried his face in his nape. His eyes stung and he wanted to tell Aphelios that he loved him. He didn't. He needed Aphelios to tell him whether he would at least grant him that one wish for now.

He would.


	6. Part VI - Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "To Sett, it had always been clear what and where and who home was. First, it had been his mother and at some point, Aphelios had entered his life and he had become his second home. The one he had wanted to stay at for the longest time, until all eternity, cheesily forever. Ever since the appointment, he wasn't so sure anymore if Aphelios still wanted the same."
> 
> Or, Aphelios doesn't want to be saved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so surprised I managed to finish this and also quite proud uwu  
> We are slowly but surely coming closer to the end of this and I can't wait to see your reactions!  
> My Twitter is @chaeyoongsao3 and I will very soon offer fanfiction commissions! :3  
> Have "fun" reading!
> 
> PS: Comstructive criticism is ALWAYS wanted! I want to grow after all. :)

1

Sett had been to the hospital twice before.

The first time because he had broken his nose. It had been in 6th grade and he had got into a brawl about a girl he had had a crush on. Some other kids had made fun of her ginger hair and called her a witch. Sett had been furious and punched the kid that had laughed the loudest. His mother had stroked his wrist and sighed while, with the other hand, she had helped press a tissue against his nose. It hadn't stopped bleeding once and Sett had started to get really dizzy. He didn't actually remember whether he had passed out but at some point, he had been back home, his nose had felt big and numb at the same time and his momma had brought him a sandwich from the diner she had been working at back then.

The second time, Sett had sprained his wrist during a boxing match. It hadn't been serious but had hurt like a bitch and he had spent the next two weeks moping and writing love letters with his right hand. He still had them although he wasn't exactly sure what some of the words were supposed to say.

Sett told Aphelios about both times as he sat beside him in the waiting room. Their thighs touched when Sett shifted. He didn't hold Aphelios' hand like his momma had whenever she had been here with him. Under different circumstances, Aphelios might have asked why he had never told him about those love letters. He didn't now. He was sitting quietly next to him and merely humming. 

Sett told him anyway: "Guess after all those years I still don't wanna drive ya away with stupid things like that."

Aphelios tilted his head and his mouth jittered as though he wanted to speak. Sett wondered whether he wanted to say that it didn't make a difference now anyway. He would die either way. 

"I'll read them to you at home", Sett preempted whatever Aphelios might have wanted to say.

His love nodded. Then they lapsed into a silence that lasted until Aphelios' name was called. It occurred to Sett that he still hadn't asked him to marry him. He had had the ring for almost two months now. He had bought it before Aphelios' graduation and he had wanted to ask him after the graduation day. Aphelios hadn't attended. They had received the confirmation of his degree via mail and it hadn't felt right to do it then. Ever since then, it hadn't felt right again either. Not because Sett's love for Aphelios had faltered in any way but because he couldn't grasp Aphelios anymore. He was so distant, miles away, like his parents had been when they had settled at the beach. He was right next to him and yet, there seemed to be oceans between them that Sett so desperately tried to cross by swimming and swimming, by nudging Aphelios' thigh with his own, by revealing tiny nothings he had never told him, adrift in an ocean that seemed so endless that nothing seemed to bring him closer to the shore.

Sett was so tired of swimming but he wouldn't stop, wouldn't dare to be swept away. That was love, wasn't it? Continuing to choke on salty water, not letting one's aching limbs rest until one had overcome the distance. It had to be it. If what Sett and Aphelios had wasn't love anymore, he would stop believing in the concept altogether.

The doctor, her name was Pandora Micheals, was a nice lady. She considered them with gentle glances whereas she spoke honestly and directly. There was a rather slim chance that chemotherapy or radiation therapy would cure Aphelios, especially considering his family's history of cancer and Alune's progression. But it would be worth a try. If it didn't cure him, it would at least keep him alive for possibly another 3 to 4 years. Medication was recommended and- in case of a successful therapy - surgery would be made possible.

Sett thought about it. Thought about how Aphelios would stay with him for a little longer and, yet, he wasn't sure whether it was worth it. He had read about the side effects of chemo- and radiation therapy and it had been scary, thinking Aphelios might have to go through all of this after he had seen how it had killed her sister along with the cancer. But shouldn't they try nevertheless? The chances were faint but didn't they owe it to their love and the life they had built up together? Didn't they owe it to the effort and their fights and their compromises and their kisses and their framed pictures and Sett's momma? Wasn't what they had worth fighting for?

Sett asked what would happen if Aphelios were to not go with any of the therapy options and the doctor said that he would die like Aphelios had done it before. He would go through a lot of pain but that a hospice would offer the medication and care to get him through the last weeks, months, maybe even years of his life. Whether Aphelios would like to consider that option at least?

"It doesn't matter."

Sett clenched his fists lightly and he stared at the desk in front of them pungently glaring. He had already known what Aphelios' opinion was on all of this but how dare he and say it didn't matter? It mattered to Sett to know whether his love would die in pain or comfort. Whether it would be two months or two more years he would be able to spend by his side. How dare he say it didn't matter?

He had to press his lips together to not yell. Doctor Micheals said she understood and whether Aphelios would like to take a seat outside for a moment. Aphelios got up as though he was glad to leave and Sett's chest felt tight.

Depression was a very common occurrence in cancer patients, she said. Sett stared at his clenched fists on his thighs and nodded. Cancer patient. He doubted he would ever get fully used to hearing this. No matter how often he would live through all of this, it would never sound less surreal, less wrong. As though Aphelios had never been supposed to get sick, never been supposed to die and leave Sett. As though their lives and emotions and bodies were so irrevocably intertwined that it just shouldn't be.

"It is very hard for relatives to accept that their loved one has given up on life", she carefully spoke, "If it was merely a mental illness, therapy would help. Whereas some cancer patients do benefit from psychotherapy, a lot just don't see the point in it, especially when they have already come to terms with their death."

Sett's vision felt blurry. Aphelios had come to terms with his death. He should have known before. How could he have killed himself when he hadn't, fully and whole-heartedly, believed in his death? Of course, he had come to terms with it. What Sett didn't understand was why. Why he would only see his sickness and the allegedly inevitable death connected to it when there were his music and Sett and his momma and so many things that he loved. They had built up something to love and to be proud of, something to appreciate. Once again, Sett wondered whether it had ever been enough.

Doctor Micheals told Sett that he should give Aphelios some more time and that, even if he continued to decide against any treatment or support, it would be the best for Sett to learn to accept it. It sounded harsh, she said, but in the end acceptance of what was happening around us was the only way to cope and continue to live.

Aphelios wasn't in front of the office. Sett was almost glad. That way, he wouldn't see how he wiped his eyes and nose and stayed with his back against the wall for a few more moments before he felt the tightness of his chest reduce. It never fully disappeared, it felt like. Sett didn't even expect it to do so anymore. 

He held Aphelios' jacket pressed against his chest and was already reaching for his phone while stepping outside the hospital. That was where he found Aphelios. He had never seen him smoke. Aphelios had never wanted to provoke any of the health risks connected to it. He had wanted to stay healthy enough to live what Alune had never been able to experience. And yet, there he was, pale digits holding a cigarette and his lips pursed around smoke and cold air met by hot breath. His nose was red and Sett wordlessly placed Aphelios' jacket over his shoulders.

Aphelios' gaze met his. Caught. There was that expression again. He felt caught. He dropped the cigarette onto the cold and wet pavement and squeezed the butt underneath his shoe as though Sett wasn't able to still smell the smoke in his hair and fingers. His love whispered an inaudible cuss and Sett quietly held his shoulders.

"Let's go home."

2

To Sett, it had always been clear what and where and who home was. First, it had been his mother and at some point, Aphelios had entered his life and he had become his second home. The one he had wanted to stay at for the longest time, until all eternity, cheesily forever. Ever since the appointment, he wasn't so sure anymore if Aphelios still wanted the same.

He smoked regularly on the balcony and they both pretended that Sett didn't know. He always washed his hands and brushed his teeth and wore a hoodie he kept in the laundry except for the times that he went outside. Sett knew that there was nothing he could do. He couldn't tell Aphelios to stop his erratic behaviour, his refusal to eat, his excessive smoking, his long nights somewhere Sett didn't know because Aphelios no longer cared whether what he did killed him before the cancer did. In fact, he would probably like that. Sett was sure of it and he was angry. So angry that Aphelios would kill himself slowly, let Sett watch and not even be honest to him about it.

He would stare at Sett with empty eyes and not even let him hold him. Aphelios was no longer his home because he was no longer wanted there. Where had it gone so wrong, Sett wondered during the Christmas holidays. He spent the days at his mother's alone because Aphelios claimed he was too tired and came home to Aphelios either drunk and asleep or drunk and smoking one cigarette after another in the cold without a jacket or blanket.

On the 26th, he returned to Aphelios shaking all over. He heard the clattering of his teeth from the hallway. and when he stepped into the living room, he felt the icy breeze and distinguished his love who no longer seemed to want his love in the dark. His momma had said what she had said before. That Aphelios didn't want to be saved and that no logic would help because he was already dying. It had been the truth and yet Sett had been so furious, had left earlier and visited the studio before returning to their flat because he hadn't been able to take the anger and the frustration about how everything had eventually become what he had wanted to avoid. He had failed and Aphelios looked so pale and far away there on the balcony that Sett ripped the curtains to the side and stared down at him.

Aphelios' eyes were glassy when they met Sett's glare and Sett wanted to scream at him and cry about how much he wanted, needed him back, needed him to make this work, scream to make him listen. Aphelios seemed deaf. He was looking at Sett speaking his words of despair and he didn't seem to understand. Maybe he simply didn't care.

"Ya can't expect me to watch ya die like that."

Sett's heart was beating against his ribcage but his voice sounded oddly controlled. He could hardly breathe from how quickly it was thudding, begging and screaming to be torn out. It couldn't take this any longer.

Aphelios hadn't bothered to put out the cigarette. Sett knew that he had to be very tipsy at least. He looked at Sett, faintly, more through him, and inhaled from the cigarette for several seconds until he blew the smoke into the freezing air. As though he wanted to show that he could do however he pleased, that Sett didn't have to watch if it bothered him this much.

He didn't say it but Sett knew that he thought it. He knew his boyfriend well enough by now. Sett didn't need him saying it either.

"I want you to live", Sett pressed out through heavy inhales, his nose fluttering, "And if ya don't, then tell me."

And Aphelios took more drags from his cigarette and looked at him unfazed until he spoke: "I don't want to live."

Sett couldn't decipher the tone although it reminded him in its subtle despair mixed with superstitious carelessness of one of the times he had talked to one of their oldest patients at the Hub. She had been heavily demented and had lost her husband and the ability to walk, even to talk at times. The rare times that she did talk, she either repeated the same sentence, looking for something, over and over again until she started crying in desperation that she just couldn't find it or she said that she wanted to die. Whether she could throw herself out of a window, whether that would kill her, whether Settrigh would give her something to end her suffering.

Sett stared at Aphelios and he wondered whether he saw himself as a heavily demented woman who had already lost and lived through everything, whether he saw himself as someone whose death was inevitable. As someone who had every right to have given up.

Sett clenched his fists and slammed one against the frame of the glassdoor. His tongue burnt underneath his teeth digging into the muscle.

"Why? Ever since you've found out, ya haven't tried shit! Do you even care about momma or me?"

With every huffed and growled out syllable, he hit the doorframe again and whereas Aphelios hadn't flinched in the beginning, his brows knitted with his hazy gaze focussed on Sett's fist.

His eyes wandered slowly and Sett was panting and glaring for what felt like eternities until he would finally meet Aphelios' gaze again.

"It doesn't matter."

Again, those words, those stupid words that he had said so often, as though it truly didn't. As though nothing mattered anymore, neither Aphelios' life nor the ones who wanted to participate in it, who loved him.

Sett let out a low sound and felt his knuckles sting when he pushed them against the rough edges again and heaved out a laboured breath.

"It does, Aphelios! It fuckin' does matter", he snarled.

"Stop hitting the wall", Aphelios slurred.

Sett scoffed.

"Why? Does it bother ya when I harm myself?"

His voice was reproachful, loud. It scratched in his throat and he felt like screaming and crying at once just so that Aphelios would show him something else than this never-ending blankness. He _needed_ him to show him something else because he couldn't go on like that.

Aphelios didn't answer so Sett growled: "I asked you a question."

Aphelios snipped the butt down their balcony and got up. His entire body was shuddering and he looked pale. Sett wanted to hurry inside and wrap a blanket around him. Sett wanted to scream at him for being so careless and that he should wake up finally. Aphelios averted his eyes from him and Sett's chest tightened. He tried to squeeze himself past Sett who merely gripped his shoulders.

Aphelios still didn't look at him when he muttered: "Let go of me."

Sett had never wanted to do anything against his love's will.

"I won't. I won' let you leave me like this", Sett hissed, "Fucking look at me."

Aphelios didn't.

"Look at me!"

His clutch on Aphelios' shoulders was tight. He felt his cold and freezing shoulders and quivering bones underneath his fingertips. His head stayed turned away from Sett, merely his eyes shifted briefly.

"Does none of this matter to you anymore?", he gnarled and he huffed and shook his head when Aphelios tried to move.

"No, you will listen. You can't just run away from this. I deserve that ya listen to me."

"I've been with ya for four fuckin' years and all you do is pushing me away when I wanted to marry ya! Ya said ya would love to so was that a lie or does it just not matter anymore? That ya wouldn' even _consider_ any fuckin' treatment?"

He inhaled the burning air sharply: "I wanna save ya so bad, Aphelios. But I can't because you never let me. Why will you not lemme save you?"

Sett sensed his voice giving in at the last word and he hissed and coughed on a sob: "Why will you not lemme stay with you?"

He gripped the collar of Aphelios' shirt and shuddered with another dry sob. Then the tears came and Aphelios' resistance stopped. He stood there silently and watched Sett bite his lips and tongue in an attempt to stop himself from crying. He rubbed his cheeks against his shoulders and repeated the same words. Why Aphelios wanted to leave him so bad, why he didn't want to be saved, that Sett could make him live if he just let him.

Aphelios smelled like cold smoke and alcohol but his arms felt the same as they always had. Comforting, like home. Sett's home. He buried his face in the crook of his freezing neck and inhaled what there was left of his Aphelios' scent and cried and Aphelios didn't move his hands, didn't say anything. He just held him as though he wasn't the cause of all of this.

"I need ya", Sett breathed out.

"You'll learn to live without me."

"I don't wanna. Please stay. Please try."

"It won't matter."

"Please try."

3

Sett was on leave for an indefinite time when Aphelios started chemotherapy. He cooked light meals as often as he could and took care of the grocery shopping and cleaning of their flat. He regularly purchased antiemetics so that Aphelios would be able to eat anything at all and made sure to urge his pale and paler becoming love to spend the afternoons on the balcony wrapped in several blankets and a knitted hat on his shaved head.

Sett sometimes caressed and kissed it. Aphelios then muttered that he missed his hair and Sett told him that he looked as gorgeous as always. With his bruises and bald scalp and glassy eyes. Sett knew that Aphelios had been crying a lot these days but he never did it in front of Sett. That was okay. He was trying. He was trying to live. He didn't protest when Sett drove him to the hospital and he didn't protest when Sett pampered and offered him medication for his nausea and pain and insomnia.

Then he got the flu and Sett spent hours at the hospital, far away from his love, while he was dying. He didn't see his face again in that timeline.

4

Sett recited the words he had used before that had made Aphelios open up to him about his sickness. He went on leave and begged him to try sooner. This time radiation therapy.

Sett softly rubbed lotion into his dry and peeling skin and massaged his scalp whenever he was sick and he watched him lose weight and disappear more and more underneath the blankets he wrapped him in. Caring for Aphelios wasn't easy. Not because Sett was bothered by it but because, unlike with the elderlies of his workplace, he couldn't emotionally detach from his love. He saw him suffer and he suffered, too. He loved him too much not to.

His mother visited them regularly and took care of Aphelios when Sett needed to rest or work. Aphelios sometimes complained that he could do things on his own but they both knew that it was a lie. Aphelios slept a lot. Sometimes he fell right back asleep after breakfast and woke up from nausea.

Doctor Micheals had reassured Sett that it was common for patients receiving radiation therapy at their abdominal area and that Sett was being a good boyfriend. Watching a loved one suffer like that was difficult and yet, he had never seemed to hesitate to stay with Aphelios. Sett had looked at Doctor Micheals and said that if there was something like destiny, it was his to save Aphelios.

She didn't understand, probably thought it was cheesy, but Sett believed in it. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been offered the chance to try again and he would only rest once Aphelios' treatment was successfully finished.

Sometimes, when Sett came back from the hospital, he found his mother in the kitchen and his Aphelios asleep on the couch. He would hug and thank her for being there for both of them and she would say that he was family to her, too, and Sett deserved to not be alone in this.

His momma stayed with them throughout the Christmas holidays and baked aromatic pies that Aphelios examined regretfully. He had lost so much weight that, sometimes, Sett was scared of breaking him when he held him. But he tried to eat because Sett had begged him to and he loved him and Sett's mother too much to not acknowledge the effort they put into nurturing him.

It was the first Christmas in a while that Sett didn't get to hear his love play the violin but he hoped that maybe next year, he would be healthy and strong enough to even participate in the orchestra again. How much he would love to see him dressed so fancily and his face glowing with excitement. He missed that glow, the glittering of his cupid bow and the colour in his cheeks. 

There were times when Sett was overcome by the sudden urge to cry as he feared it might not work and he had to see Aphelios suffer again. He feared starting at square one and watching the decay from the very beginning. He feared Aphelios having to experience death again and he feared dying himself. When he cried, he usually buried his face in Aphelios' lap and curled up in his icy embrace until the pain in his chest would reduce. Aphelios would caress his hair then and tell him that it was all alright. It wasn't and Aphelios didn't believe in it but Sett didn't mind that lie.

By the beginning of Spring, they were informed that the radiation therapy hadn't brought the results they were hoping for.

Sett stared at Aphelios' bony hand in his own. Doctor Micheal's voice sounded so far away as she explained that, usually the second-line treatment had a lower chance at succeeding and that the possibility of Aphelios actually benefiting from any more therapies was so little that they should consider making use of hospice care.

Sett failed to recognize his voice when he asked whether they should give up already.

"Stopping treatment might seem like giving up", the doctor said, "But letting Mister Akatsuki's body rest might make him live longer."

Live longer. That was not what Sett had wanted for him, for them. He didn't want Aphelios to only live longer, he wanted him to survive this. Wasn't that what he had been working for so hard, what he had watched Aphelios die for?

"What are his chances of survival?", he then asked.

He lifted his gaze and looked at Doctor Micheals who looked back with furrowed brows.

Before she could answer Sett's question, Aphelios' voice sounded. Aphelios hardly ever talked during those appointments and check-ups. He hardly ever participated and although it had angered Sett in the beginning, he had learned to accept it. But now he spoke and Sett looked at him indefinably at his just as indefinable tone.

"There are none."

Sett felt himself scoff as though it had been a joke. He knew it hadn't been.

"Not exactly _none_ , but they are so insignificant that you should be prepared", Doctor Micheals added.

No, no, no. Sett almost protested out loud. This wasn't what was supposed to happen, this wasn't fair. Aphelios' knuckles pressed into his tightening palm in an attempt to ease the tension. Sett wanted to tear his hand away but how could he let go of Aphelios now? Sett was no longer staring at either of them directly. Instead, his gaze shifted around and he blinked, licked his lips.

His head suddenly felt burning and he shook it. 

"Settrigh."

Sett moved his head again.

"No", he huffed, "Are you sure? We haven't really tried yet. We only started last fall."

The words left Sett's mouth hurriedly and he stared at Doctor Micheals, hoping that she would return his gaze with the answer that he wanted to hear and see. That trying for a few more months might truly work. That second-line therapy might be more efficient than the radiation therapy they had tried. That the cancer would just dissipate and let Aphelios stay with Sett.

She said none of those things and neither did Aphelios say what Sett needed him to say.

"I don't want any more treatments."

Sett turned his face to his love and his brows crumpled as he clasped his hand: "Aphelios."

Aphelios shook his head firmly: "I won't put up with what Alune went through."

"You won't have to, moon, you will live. I will make sure of it. I told ya, you just have to let me."

Sett pleaded. His throat and lids strained. He wished he could fall to his knees and beg. For Aphelios to try. For Doctor Micheals to urge Aphelios to undergo another line of treatment. For any creature, superior being, to make it all unhappen. Wasn't he supposed to save Aphelios? Why would it not let him? Why would the world kill his Aphelios over and over again and leave Sett in his belief he could change anything when he couldn't? The end result was always the same.

"I won't _live_ , Settrigh", Aphelios said adamantly.

He looked into his love's face and he saw the exhaustion in his squinted eyes and the paleness of his cheeks and he knew he was right.

Aphelios wouldn't live and Sett wouldn't be able to make him.

5

When Sett had first woken up and found himself back in their flat full of affection and love, he had been so sure that it was his mission to save Aphelios. In all the novels he had read and all the movies he had watched, saving one's loved one had always been portrayed as difficult but never had he read that a character had been faced with the inevitability of fate.

Sett, not believing in fate, had at least believed that he would be able to change what would happen to his love and, therefore also, to them. That he would die before they married, before they went on their honeymoon and before they had a chance to do everything else they had always talked about so blissfully.

Realizing, concluding, that Aphelios wasn't meant to live hurt. It hurt so much because when Sett still thought there was a way to change things, he had had hope. He hadn't felt the pain of watching Aphelios suffer and die as much because he had been certain, sometime, in another world, his Aphelios would live and thrive and his hair would grow back and his shoulders would be covered in soft tissue again. He would hold the violin and play it so tenderly and he would hold Sett and love him just as tenderly. They would love imperfectly and stupidly and when one of them died, they would spread their ashes where they wanted to remain.

Aphelios wasn't yet his husband and Sett doubted he would manage to make him his anymore. He awaited Aphelios' death this time with an emptiness similar to the one he had felt when Aphelios had first killed himself. A final and ultimate emptiness. The next time would be the last time and he would do everything right so that, once Aphelios' time came, he would know Sett had tried and would try over and over again. But he thought it was time to let Aphelios and himself rest.

They deserved it.


	7. Part VII - Moving On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aphelios tilted his head and now looked up at him: "You are living with me. I mean, we can always change that..."
> 
> Aphelios was joking and Sett huffed out a laugh before he quickly cupped Aphelios' cheeks and shook his head again.
> 
> "No. Don't leave."
> 
> Or, Settrigh lets Aphelios go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so incredibly sorry that this took me so long to finish. I've been having a really rough time.  
> But here it finally is!  
> This is, technically seen, the last chapter. The next and officially last one is... a surprise :D  
> I hope you enjoy this delayed chapter!  
> I thank you all for your patience. :)  
> \- Lola
> 
> PS: I update about my writing on my Twitter (@chaeyoongsao3) nwn

1

Sett woke up as he had done it before. His heart was pounding against his ribcage and Aphelios was standing there in front of their mirror. Gray autumn morning light. His eyes darted to him and Sett caught his gaze with his own almost longingly.

"Sett?"

Sett had heard Aphelios speak his name in that exact manner several times now and yet, it never failed to make his chest tighten. Especially now that he knew he wouldn't go back. He lifted himself up and stared at Aphelios in his sweater.

"C'mere", he breathed out and Aphelios tilted his head curiously but he inched closer and crawled onto the bed right into his arms.

Sett cupped his cheeks and he knew about his morning breath and Aphelios hadn't been to the bathroom yet either but he didn't care. He had to feel his lips against his own, had to show him how much he loved him. Only if Aphelios left with that awareness, Sett could truly let him go.

Aphelios' nose nudged his own and his lips parted in a breathy chuckle before it was swallowed by his love's pursed peck. He received it with his brows furrowed in an agony this Aphelios, his nevertheless, would never be able to grasp. He kissed his sleep-dry lips with his own quivering ones. Aphelios had to feel it but he didn't get to mention it. Sett wouldn't let him speak now, ask what was wrong because he doubted he could ever explain any of this to him. 

Sett kissed the corners of his mouth, his jaw and eventually his neck and Aphelios chuckled and Sett wanted to cry. He hadn't heard him in amusement for far too long. He tugged on Aphelios' pale skin and nuzzled his collarbones lovingly. His embrace around his tender frame was tight, eager, and Aphelios' tiny sounds of joy and arousal turned into pants and gasps when Sett started lowering his kisses. He spread them over his jittering thighs and over his soft belly, nudged his ribcage with his nose and rubbed circles into his pelvis.

"I love you", Sett muttered against the hem of his boxers, Aphelios exhaled deeply, "Moon. I love you so much."

Aphelios' hand was gentle in his hair just like his eyes on him when he kissed all along him.

"I love you, too."

Then Sett made shaky and face burying love to him. He kissed his arched neck and held his arched hips and told him he loved him over and over again until he was breathless and Aphelios was snickering.

When Aphelios wanted to leave for the appointment, Sett pulled him close by his hips and breathed in the scent of his shampoo. He wished he could keep him right there forever, bruised by his lips and teeth, all his, alive and well without anything to fight or worry about. If only Aphelios didn't leave now, maybe he could keep him. 

His throat was tight and only tightened with his love's words: "You're acting as though I would never come back."

Sett laughed breathily at that. He shook his head and kissed the top of Aphelios'.

"No", he hummed, "I just realized how badly I wanna live with ya."

Aphelios tilted his head and now looked up at him: "You _are_ living with me. I mean, we can always change that..."

Aphelios was joking and Sett huffed out a laugh before he quickly cupped Aphelios' cheeks and shook his head again.

"No. Don't leave."

His love left nevertheless and when he came back, Sett hugged him in the hallway and hugged him on the couch after he had handed him the letter. Sett had read it swiftly - The words hadn't changed - and reached for Aphelios to hold him through the pain that wasn't anything new anymore and yet hadn't stopped being the most unbearable thing Sett had ever experienced. 

He cried but not anymore because of the result but because this time, he wouldn't try to save Aphelios from any of this. He couldn't. He had tried and he had failed, over and over again. The desperation, the anger and the frustration had eaten Sett alive and he didn't know where to go anymore. He might love Aphelios with all of his humble and awkward self, with his crooked and pained heart, imperfectly and stupidly, but maybe loving him meant also letting him go.

Sett stroked his bruised and damp neck with his thumb and kissed it. It tasted salty from his own tears.

Then he whispered: "I want to marry you."

Aphelios stilled. Sett couldn't see his face with his nose nudging the area below his ear and only when he lifted his head he met Aphelios' wide eyes.

The corners of his mouth jittered and Sett said: "I mean it."

He did. Before letting him go, he wanted to at least know that he died as his husband until death parted them. He knew it would happen so soon and the mere thought pained him, that they would never have children as Sett had longed for, that they wouldn't grow old together. But maybe, married, Aphelios would understand that Sett would go through all of this again and again just to make sure he died being sure of Sett's love.

"I will die", Aphelios said in a tone Sett had heard before.

Sett looked up into his face and moved his hands to his cheeks. He cupped them, brushed them with his thumbs, and hummed. They hadn't talked about treatments yet nor had Sett asked him about the appointment at their local hospital's oncologist who had been the same each time. But he knew that, no matter how often he experienced Aphelios' last few months, his belief in dying never changed.

"I know. I still wanna marry you."

Aphelios seemed to have a hard time believing that Sett would still want to marry him when he would die. That dying meant being inevitably and irrevocably left by everyone he had once loved while it gave Sett all the more reason to stay with him. He looked back at Sett with his brows crumpled in confusion, disbelief and Sett kissed them until they loosened.

"Why would I leave you now?", he whispered against his forehead and pursed his lips against it, too.

Why wouldn't he, Aphelios asked.

"Because I love you, moon."

2

Sett‘s love for Aphelios didn‘t falter even after the first appointment at Doctor Micheals‘ office and neither did Aphelios‘. This time, Sett held his hand in the waiting room, kept him close and told him that it was okay when Aphelios insisted that he didn't want any treatment.

„I‘ll stay with you no matter what“, Sett said firmly and held Aphelios‘ hand.

How he could watch him die, Aphelios retorted.

And Sett turned his head to him in agony and despair and whispered: „I want the life you‘ve led up to that point to be happy.“

Aphelios couldn‘t possibly know that Sett knew no matter which treatments and options there were out there none of them would bring happiness or life to Aphelios. What did life even matter when Aphelios wasn‘t happy to be in it? Sett had been selfish, desperate in his attempts to find the cure, a way of making Aphelios survive, barely alive for a few more weeks because he couldn‘t bear the thought of his love gone again.

At some point, however, Aphelios would be gone. He would die and their flat would stop harbouring his scent. The pictures in their album would fade and Sett would forget what pear pie smelled like. He would wash Aphelios‘ towels and clothes and maybe donate them. At some point, he would forget what he had even smelled like to begin with and how his voice had sounded. Snickering, annoyed, aroused, delighted. All the nuances of his emotions displayed in his twitching features and glistening eyes and cupid bow would merge until there was no distinguishment anymore and it all was one expression, one sound, one faint smell. And, at some other point, Sett would think back and there wouldn‘t be anything distinctive left. Only light and washy colours in front of his inner eye. Aphelios would cease to exist and become nothing more than that.

Did that scare Sett? Nothing had ever scared him more. But he also had never been more sure of doing something for someone he loved.

Aphelios looked at him in an agony similar to the one Sett sensed whereas he was on the other side of that pain. He had never let Sett see it up until this point.

„I am happy, Settrigh.“

Sett wanted to cry. He wanted to cry with relief and at how much it hurt. It was overbearing and so potent just like his desire to keep Aphelios with him, happy. He wanted to keep Aphelios happy forever. He could only do that by letting him go, couldn‘t he?

He took Aphelios‘ hand into both of his own and brought it up to his lips: „I promise I‘ll never make you feel anythin‘ else.“

When they got home, Sett got the box with his love letters and he read them to Aphelios this time in earnest. And Aphelios giggled at the clumsy words full of premature and immature adoration and the clumsy metaphors Sett would still use in the same manner. He said that he had always been a hopeless romantic and Aphelios asked why he had never shown him.

"Guess after all those years I still don't wanna drive ya away with stupid things like that."

Aphelios furrowed his brows and murmured: "You could never drive me away."

Sett knew that he could. He had driven him away and lost him far too often to still believe in the immortality of their love. And yet, he liked to keep holding onto it. He wanted to believe that, even with Aphelios gone and disappearing bit by bit, his love for him would remain.

He eventually got up and rummaged in the dresser in their entryway. When he returned, Aphelios was still seated on their bed. His frame was covered by the blanket Sett had placed on his shoulders earlier and his fingertips were caressing the envelopes covered in stickers and ink. Sett stared at him from the doorframe and he still thought he had never seen a man more gorgeous, more ethereal and breathtaking than Aphelios. It ached how beautiful he looked in his tiredness and his mindless caressing of something so dear to Sett.

He approached him carefully and Aphelios' gaze met his.

It followed Sett as he lowered himself on one knee and mumbled: "I said I wanna marry you and nothing will ever change that."

Aphelios' brows crumpled in something that looked like disbelief. Disbelief that Sett could be so stubborn, so genuine, that he had truly bought a ring. He had bought it before any of the repetitions although Sett was sure he would have bought the same one over and over again. It had cost a little fortune whereas it looked as though it was much more expensive. Aphelios deserved it.

"Aphelios", Sett started off.

Aphelios shifted on the bed and Sett took in his every movement as though they were his oxygen and he needed them to live.

"Will you marry me? I didn't write any notes to say somethin' cute that might make you wanna marry me more but I love you and I really wanna call you by my name. So will you?"

He spoke with a tiny, awkward chuckle, just as blatantly and clumsily as he had asked him on their first date and asked him to be his boyfriend on the Ferris wheel. There were no glistening pinks and oranges and the world didn't stop spinning. They weren't above miniature buildings, on top of the world, but it didn't matter. They had never needed the colours and the timelessness to stare each other in the eyes for eternities and to make love and communicate their love verbally. So Sett thought this was perfect. This moment was as timeless and colourful as any other moment would ever be.

Suddenly there was the sound of clothes shifting and warm arms wrapped around Sett. He shook as he inhaled Aphelios' shampoo and he shook some more when he sensed Aphelios' shudders.

"Of course, I will."

3

The last times, Sett had been so caught up in trying to find ways to save Aphelios that he had always been so far away from Aphelios. He had been separated from him by their different and irreconcilable wants and by the time he would try and turn back to Aphelios, he had been too far gone to still marry him.

Now, Aphelios was finally wearing the ring he had had for what seemed like ages. He was finally wrapping his fingers around Sett's nape and he could sense the cold of the metal and the cold of Aphelios' fingers from the icy breeze outside. He had never wanted something as bad as this.

Whether Aphelios could feel the ring's firmness against his waist as well? Whether he noticed the glistening when Sett stroked his cheek and whether it meant just as much to him? It had to. This time, Aphelios didn't turn away from Sett's kisses and wound out of his embrace. This time, he smiled - weakly but a smile nevertheless - against Sett's lips and wrapped his arms around him before Sett even had a chance to do it and he stayed there, tightly squeezed against Sett until their kisses turned heated.

They rarely did it and sometimes, Sett remembered their first summer after the fair. How they had been so eager to kiss and so eager to undress. Sometimes, Sett missed it but he never missed it more than he loved Aphelios and his mere presence. He didn't have to touch him to adore him, Aphelios didn't even have to look at him. It was enough for Sett to just sit there and watch his Aphelios in the gray autumn light that soon turned warm from the fairy lights that adorned their home when winter came.

It would soon be Christmas and they would spend it together at his momma's place. Aphelios had promised. Although his jaw became slimmer and his cheeks paler, he had promised because this time, nothing was driving them apart.

At times, Aphelios would try. Out of nowhere, he would snap at Sett and Sett would take a deep breath and give Aphelios time on his own. In the meantime, Sett would write a tiny letter in which he wrote different things. Love letters, letters filled with a short, fictional story about them in another universe - one where Aphelios would live - or sometimes multiple-choice questions ("Are you still mad at me?" - "Yes", "No", "Maybe" or "My fiancé is the hottest man alive." with only the option "Yes" to tick). They would make Aphelios snort or cry. Sometimes he snapped some more because he wanted Sett to hate him. Sett could never.

Then he would hold Aphelios and mutter those exact words: "Don't try to make me hate ya. I could never."

He made Aphelios breathe with him until his chest rose and sank in the same rhythm as his own, until their bodies moved in unison, an endearing and cheesy symbiosis that Sett would imagine when he couldn't sleep.

Aphelios got sick often and the rare times he could eat couldn't stop him from losing more and more weight. He agreed to antiemetics and refused painkillers up to the point where the stomachaches left him sleepless and Sett too worried for Aphelios to decline any longer. He slept for many hours and stayed awake for only very little. By the time Christmas had arrived, his dark orbs were surrounded by a colour as warm and yellow as the lights.

It was all normal, Doctor Micheals had said. Those were normal symptoms for someone nearing their end. He should expect no more than a few months, however. Sett had pressed his lips together and nodded. That had been to be expected. She recommended hospice care. Sett would ask, after the holidays.

Aphelios still went with Sett to his momma. He wore the sweater she had knitted for them this year and ate well to disappoint neither mother nor son. After dinner and unwrapping presents, he fell asleep. Sett stood at the sink with his mother and he eyed his love.

"Settrigh, dear", she said as she handed Sett a plate.

He wrapped it in the dish towel and glanced back at her. Watching Aphelios like that made him sad.

"When is the wedding?"

His mother didn't say it out loud but Sett knew that she was asking because of Aphelios' condition. If it continued to worsen at that rate, they wouldn't even be able to leave for a honeymoon and Aphelios might not be able to enjoy the wedding at all. Sett knew that he couldn't wait for much longer. Not with the wedding nor with asking Aphelios to please reconsider the hospice care. He might feel better there, might receive more adequate care from someone who actually knew how to deal with all of this. After all those repetitions, Sett still felt so utterly helpless and he didn't want Aphelios to die wishing there had been someone who would have treated him better.

Sett knew that Aphelios hadn't achieved even remotely all of the things he had had in mind. He had never applied for a job at an elementary school, had never had a solo at a concert. He had never filled out adoption forms with Sett and he had never called a child theirs. Sett also knew he wouldn't experience any of those things. But if there was one thing he could strive to accomplish it was to let Aphelios leave not regretting to have stayed with Sett until his last moments.

"Soon, momma."

Sett carried Aphelios back home in the cold while he was glowing. He had got a fever that stayed until the 26th. Sett fed him ice cubes and caressed his hot face. He held his hair when he got sick and whispered him back to sleep. He didn't want to go to the hospital, didn't want to be away from Sett, Aphelios said drowsily whenever Sett suggested it, full of fear his love might leave him already without being wedded yet.

But he stayed with him and ate puree until the day before New Year's eve when Sett declared that he wanted to marry him. Right at the beginning of the new year. Whether Aphelios would like that.

Aphelios tilted his head so that his cheek was nudging Sett's lips and he could faintly watch him through the corners of his eyes. Like that, Aphelios stayed for a moment.

"Are you scared I might die too soon?"

Sett looked him back in his tinted eyes. He wanted to lie, say that he didn't fear Aphelios would face death soon, that he believed in him and his body, in him living. But he didn't. He didn't think Aphelios would live another summer. He wasn't even sure whether Aphelios wouldn't just disappear before spring extended those dark days and woke up the petals on their balcony. He wasn't sure whether they wouldn't lift their tired heads from underneath the melting snow and see Sett all alone and cry alongside him with low buds.

He wasn't sure of anything anymore.

The sob resembled more a strangled sound Sett made at the back of his throat and he buried his nose in the crook of Aphelios' neck quickly so that he wouldn't see the tears although they both knew that he could feel them.

"I want you to be mine."

Aphelios' embrace wasn't firm but it was all Sett had ever needed.

"I am already yours. That will never change, Settrigh."

Sett wrapped his arms around Aphelios' tender frame. His body and head shook. Aphelios didn't know that once he was gone, he would be taken away from Sett.

"Please let me marry you."

4

When Sett suggested Pandora Micheals as their matron of honour, Aphelios seemed surprised. So did Doctor Micheals. Unlike Sett, she had known the couple for merely a few months but he remembered how she had given him a call after Aphelios' last death, how she had told Sett that Aphelios must have been a very happy man and that Sett should never doubt the happiness he had made him feel. She knew that Aphelios had truly loved him. He hadn't seen her again to thank her so he wanted to thank her now.

They invited her, a few closer friends from their previous workplace and his momma for the 14th of January. It was Aphelios' favourite number. His mother had taken Aphelios out to buy a suit and although the temptation to have a peek - Aphelios had been asleep for the rest of the day - had been almost unbearable, Sett had promised himself to not ruin the surprise.

His momma had baked pear and coconut pie for Alune and Aphelios together with Pandora, helped Sett to decorate their flat and taken care of the appointment for their civil wedding. Sett had never asked either of them for any of it but Pandora was a good woman and his mother loved Sett. Both knew that he was suffering and wanted to make this easier.

Both came in the morning of the 14th. His mother got Aphelios dressed while Sett waited in their living room next to Pandora, anxiously awaiting his love. He felt her eyes on him and he glimpsed back.

Sett was overcome by the sudden urge to tell her about everything that had happened. He wanted to tell her that Aphelios had, at some point, killed himself and that Sett had tried to save him, that she had helped, too. He wanted to tell her that it all had been in vain but that she had never judged his Aphelios for his harshness during the appointments nor Sett for his silence. He had never met Alune but he couldn't help but think that, maybe, if she had lived and grown to be a doctor, she would have been a lot like Doctor Micheals.

What he ended up with was much simpler. How could anyone ever grasp the insanity of the truth?

"Thank you."

Pandora caressed the seams of her dress and squinted her eyes at Sett. She probably thought for accepting their offer to be their matron of honour or for planning and going on leave for their wedding at such short notice. How was she supposed to know Sett was grateful for so much more?

"What for?"

Sett averted his eyes from her slightly unsure expression and looked at the hands on his lap.

"For doing this for us."

Pandora let out a hum. She understood. She was smart. A whole lot smarter than Sett. She understood what Aphelios and Sett were going through, could put it into words and use the right ones to make you feel as though you had fought hard enough.

"I've been an oncologist for almost 10 years now", she eventually retorted.

She lifted a hand off her skirt and ran it over her face, carefully avoiding her painted eyes.

"Treatments have changed but what people go through hasn't."

Then Pandora sighed, chuckled humourlessly and shook her head: "I guess, each time a patient can't be helped I feel a sense of guilt. Isn't that selfish? I am probably doing this more for myself than you."

Sett had thought so much about how he and Aphelios felt each on their own in all of this that he had never considered anyone else. Not the elderlies in the retirement home, not their coworkers, not his momma and not Pandora. It hadn't seemed important because, in the end, it was all about saving Aphelios only.

But as he looked back at Pandora, he felt as though he understood. He was selfish, too. They all were, in their attempt to be good for others, selfish. That was okay.

Sett whispered those words and placed a careful hand on Pandora's shoulders. She thanked him, too. Next, his momma returned with a wide yet tired smile and her hands clasped. Whether they were ready to see the groom.

Sett had never been readier.

His love - his slim-limbed and hollow-cheeked, his unconditional and immortal love - had never looked more ethereal than in that white suit. It wasn't a suit he would wear for a concert, for someone else's wedding but his own. Sett's and his. They had bought the suit for that day only and he wouldn't wear it to any other occasion even if he had been to live. It was what made the sight so special.

Pandora said that he looked great and Sett stared at him. He eventually took him into his arms and said that he had the most beautiful husband one could ever have.

Sett had been writing and practising the words for his vows for a while now. He hadn't asked his momma for help although he had never been too good with words. However, he had wanted it to be his doing. He had wanted to give Aphelios something that was all his all for his love. 

All throughout the ceremony, Sett held Aphelios' hand in his. He wouldn't dare to let go of him again merely out of fear he might leave him if he held him too tightly. Sett wouldn't let him be alone in the waiting room again. He was right there just like he had promised. Aphelios squeezed his hand back with bony fingers and only let go when he signed the certificate.

Then he stood in front of Sett and looked up at him. His head was slightly tilted upwards and Sett examined his creaseless eyes and his twitching brows. It felt as though he had seen him in the staircase of their old apartment building wrapped in the darkness of an early spring only yesterday. As though no time at all had passed since he had approached him and thought that he had looked pretty in his exhaustion. As though he could still taste the words he had spoken so brazenly and shamefully because Aphelios' beauty had always made him lose his mind and all reason, lose control of all his senses. There had been no more of it, no more materialism, only beings, separated from their bodies, floating in non-existence. Their souls had cried blissfully and danced when they had wrapped their hollowness around each other and created something tangible and whole. 

Sett clasped what they had made as he clasped Aphelios' wrists and clasped the words he spoke until it was his turn.

"Aphelios", Sett cleared his throat as he fumbled a piece of paper out of his blazer and Aphelios chuckled, snorted at how clumsily Sett was trying to get his notes.

Sett gave him a quick, non-serious glare and cleared his throat again: "When I was younger, I really liked romance novels and movies. I still like them but being with you is better than what's written in most of them and you hate the movies and the novels said that love was about compromise."

Sett had his head lowered over the paper and looked up into Aphelios' face whenever he felt secure enough to continue without it.

"I have never minded compromising for you because what your love gives me is more than anything I'd have to dispense. That is what the novels would probably call the one true love. I am cheesy enough to say that you are mine and always will be."

In all the previous repetitions, Sett had missed an expression that he hadn't been able to get enough of when they had started to fall for one another. One of utter affection, adoration, love. At some point, Aphelios had stopped looking at him like that. This time, however, Sett was met with a gaze out of those tenderly squinted eyes and his mouth twitching, his cupid bow glistening. He was met with the exact expression he had feared he might never see again and it made his heart swell. It swelled and became so big that it seemed to longer fit into his chest. He wondered how all the love he held for Aphelios could even fit into his body, as though it shouldn't be able to bear all of it, overflowing and dripping, oozing with love.

"I know that you're scared. I'm, too. Hell, I'm so horrified of everything that's to come and I'll never lie to you about how much it hurts. But it's never made me regret any of the feelings I have for you nor the years I've spent by your side because they've been everything my humble and awkward self could've ever asked for."

Sett eventually stuffed the paper into the pocket and glanced back up at Aphelios. The necklace around his neck was glistening. His eyes were glassy and his brows jittering in that revealing manner of his. All of his expressions, all of those tiny jerks, had always been so meaningful to Sett. He doubted he would ever be able to read and watch a person like Aphelios again.

Sett gulped: "Aphelios."

He clasped his cold hands in his own and brought them to his lips: "I hereby promise that I shall love you, imperfectly and stupidly, for better and for worse, until death do us part."

Aphelios' mouth curled up into a shaky smile and he pressed out a chuckle behind his closed lips that Sett wanted to kiss and fondle until they were no longer. And he did once the gold was on their fingers. He clasped his pale beauty's face with hands much too big for such fragility and kissed him. He kissed him until he could taste his own tears in their mouths and Aphelios whispered his name.

"Say it again", he pleaded.

He wanted to hear him say his name again. He wanted to savour and harbour how his tongue lingered underneath his teeth at the _S_ , how gentle the _tt_ rolled off his lips and his persistence on calling him by his full name whenever they felt so close and in love. He needed to hear it again because someday, Aphelios wouldn't be able to say it for him again.

Aphelios didn't deny him his wish.

"Settrigh."

He begged Aphelios to say his name over and over again when he lied with him that night so that he would consciously memorise every hue of his name spoken by his husband. When he trembled with pleasure and when he trembled with sadness, when he was sleepy and swallowed the consonants, full of adoration and full of annoyance. Sett wanted it all. Oh, how bad it hurt. Oh, how sweet it sounded.

He wanted all of that bitter sweetness. It was the only thing keeping him alive and it would be the only thing keeping Aphelios alive in his memory.

5

Settrigh thought about his voice a lot after he had died. He tried to remember how Aphelios had emphasised certain words, spoken about certain things. He tried to remember the motion of his features, whether he could see his teeth, how often he blinked, how his gaze flickered. It were tiny, seemingly unimportant things. But when Settrigh tried to reconstruct Aphelios and all of him within his mind, he wondered whether he would have felt any closer to him with him gone if he had been aware of all of it. Whether knowing the number of his blinks per minute and his enunciation would bring him or at least what was left of him closer to Settrigh. Whether he would be more alive then.

He thought about those things for hours, days and weeks without any hopes for an answer. He knew no matter how often he would repeat Aphelios' last months, he would always end up wondering and regretting. He had let Aphelios go and he hadn't had any regrets left. Settrigh had wished for it so bad. Yet, he had hoped that Aphelios' peace would set him free as well.

It hadn't.

Maybe Settrigh clung onto all those details because he hardly remembered Aphelios' face from when he had gone. He had seen him, his writhing and his dying, through hazy eyes and a blur, an irrevocable fog that had enveloped him fully. He had been in the middle of a glade and helplessly turned his head to see the beginning of the forest, his love, somewhere behind the thicket on the hospice bed.

Maybe he tried to remember so badly, so persistently, because the only thing he had perceived had been Aphelios' suddenly tiny and fading voice telling him that he was happy. As Settrigh had lowered his head against his chest and sensed Aphelios' arms shaking around him, he had also said that it was going to be okay.

He loved Aphelios, he had whispered and he had been suddenly overcome by the urge to cry and beg his love to stay. But Aphelios had merely stroked his hair in weak motions and repeated his words.

His mother had picked him up and cried with him in the park in front of the hospice. She had held him and although her arms had been nothing like Aphelios', Settrigh had tried to imagine they were. Her tremors had been Settrigh's and Settrigh had forgotten whose tears had created the wetness on his neck and whose the one on his shirt.

She had hugged him and caressed his hair, taken his hand, like she had done when he had been a child. This time, Settrigh didn't encounter the emptiness and the anger first. This time, he was sad. Purely and intensely sad. So much that his heart no longer seemed to ooze with love but sadness and it dripped from the seams of his limbs onto his momma's floor and along her arms that he clung onto like a kid in the candy store. Tugging and begging. Please would she give him his Aphelios back? She couldn't. How could she when even Settrigh, who had tried so hard, couldn't?

He stayed with her for a shorter while before he returned to their apartment. There he stained Aphelios' clothes with tears and slept with them in his arms until they no longer bore his scent. Then Settrigh would stuff them into the laundry and cry in front of the drum. He cried so much that he sometimes wondered whether his body would end up using its resources to provide more and more tears until Settrigh was only dry skin and dry bones, dried muscles, a grotesque piece of human beef jerky, surrounded by what had once hydrated him.

He knew that it was ridiculous but many of the things he wondered and thought about were so the ridiculousness had lost its meaning. A lot of things had. But Settrigh had survived before and he would survive again although it didn't feel like it.

Pandora visited him a few days after the cremation. Not as a doctor but as a friend. She had brought a casserole like the wealthy women in suburban neighbourhoods in movies did after their poor widowed neighbour had lost her husband. Maybe Settrigh was no different from them, dressed in nothing more than baggy clothes and living off microwaved meals or the food his momma brought.

He let her and the baking dish in and guided her to the kitchen. His mother had made sure to stop by from time to time and remind Settrigh to clean up. She would sit on the couch and guide Settrigh all around the house with her glances and pointing fingers. She wouldn't let him deteriorate no matter his sadness. The cleaning felt good and at the same time, it scared Settirgh each time. As though removing the dust that had stuck on Aphelios before and airing the rooms its carbon dioxide had been exhaled by his love before would make him disappear more quickly.

He would admit his fears to his mother and she would comfort him by saying that Aphelios was gone, that the particles harbouring him would disappear just like his body would. That was life. Life was ephemeral, our bodies were. What wasn't were our minds and our thoughts. They continued to exist when we ceased to. If Settrigh only continued to keep him in his memory his husband would never fully die.

It was what Settrigh tried to remind himself of. Especially when his mind wandered and he thought, somewhere, there might be a universe in which Aphelios hadn't died, in which Settrigh might have been able to save him.

Pandora placed the casserole on a counter and clasped her hands as she looked at Settrigh.

"Thanks", he said.

He was standing on the other side of the counter and had his arms crossed. Her turtleneck was beige silk and looked too elegant for a home as crafty and self-made as Aphelios' and his. As though Pandora, not their doctor but someone who had become a friend to Settrigh, was everything their relationship had never been. Perhaps that was why having someone here who wasn't his mother felt as though he allowed someone new to intrude the emptiness his love had left behind and fill it with something else. Settrigh knew Pandora was neither trying nor intending to. Settrigh wouldn't allow it either.

She rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and ran a hand through her hair. Settrigh's eyes followed the motion of her gentle hands. In his mind, he compared them to Aphelios'. They had been larger, longer, veinier and he had kept his nails short. Pandora's were neatly filed. French nails as his mother had shown him often enough to recognize them.

Pandora asked where the plates were and Settrigh retorted that he wasn't hungry. She didn't care and searched through the cabinets until Settrigh gave in. He watched her prepare their portions and heat them up.

How many times had Settrigh seen his Aphelios stand there in the same manner? How many times had he approached him, wrapped his arms around his slender frame and inhaled his shampoo? He watched Pandora intently and wondered whether she would smell or feel anything like Aphelios, whether anything in her presence or being could replace Aphelios. No, not replace him. Fill Settrigh up like a cup that hadn't been empty for too long to now bare the hollowness.

The box bearing Aphelios' ashes was dark mahogany and crested with a moon and it seemed to watch Settrigh when he approached Pandora and felt her shoulders. It seemed to watch when Pandora called his name - She enunciated his _S_ and his _tt_ so much differently - and Settrigh silenced her with his lips. He hadn't felt anyone else's lips for long enough to feel as though his lips didn't belong on Pandora's. They were supposed to never belong on someone's that weren't Aphelios'. Whether his ashes were screaming and crying like Settrigh had when he had first lost Aphelios as his hands cupped Pandora's waist? Whether they were begging Settrigh to stay faithful to his dead husband or whether they craved Settrigh to move on? He couldn't tell, didn't even know if his Aphelios was still conscious, somewhere far away from Settrigh's consciousness.

Pandora was warm despite the cold outside. It would soon be March again. The flesh on her hips felt different. He couldn't sense her bones without adding pressure. He did it with his thumbs, rubbed them in circles and held her close by it. Pandora whispered that he shouldn't but kissed him back nonetheless and kept her hands on his chest.

Settrigh's hand slid to the hem of her trousers and she met his hands, covered them with her palms, and whispered some more. Settrigh didn't understand her words, maybe he just didn't want to hear them. That she knew he missed Aphelios but she wasn't him and she wouldn't feel like he did. Settrigh ignored them, dismissed them with "I don't care" and hands grasping bared skin. Underneath the silk, she was even warmer.

Hadn't he told himself that he wouldn't let anyone into the space his love and he had created? How could he kiss her and touch her stomach and bosom in front of his ashes surrounded by the remaining particles of him and still sleep at night? Perhaps he didn't care because he already couldn't. He couldn't sleep and couldn't be awake either. His entire existence had been reduced to "can't"s so maybe Pandora could be a "can". He could kiss her and sleep with her and be alive while she was there. Aphelios would want that, no? For him to be able to live. He hoped Aphelios wouldn't hate him but what did it matter anyway?

He kissed her jaw and her neck and inhaled. There he suddenly cried because he couldn't find what he had lost. She smelled like a gentle perfume that was covered by the saltiness of Settrigh's tears. He tasted them on skin that didn't taste like Aphelios' and sobbed. Pandora's smaller hands caressed his back. He couldn't hear the sound the fabric made over the sounds he let out, pants and gasps. He attempted to kiss her again, attempted to wipe his tears and act as though there weren't any new ones flowing. But Pandora took his wrists from her waist and moved her thumbs across his palms.

She shushed him and whispered that Settrigh wouldn't find him in her. Settrigh shook his head while Pandora guided his hands to his chest instead. Settrigh was sure that she could feel his heart thudding underneath Settrigh's palms.

"I am sorry that no one will ever be able to give you what you're missing", she soft-spokenly muttered.

Settrigh moved his head in disagreement again. He needed it so bad. Couldn't he just kill himself and go back again? Over and over until it wouldn't work anymore? At least then he would live to marry and make love and love his Aphelios until he was forbidden to by the universe, by fate.

Settrigh turned away when he gritted his teeth and asked Pandora to leave.

His momma ate Pandora's casserole and he told her that he was scared of never finding a love like Aphelios again. She wrapped an arm around Settrigh's shoulder and pulled him against her chest, into his lap. He had spent hours curled up next to his mother as a child. He wondered why he had ever stopped.

While with one hand she guided the fork around, she stroked Settrigh's hair with the other one. He could feel her sigh in her stomach.

"You won't."

The audience in the comedy they were watching laughed.

"I don' wanna go on."

His momma sighed again and brushed the strands out of his face.

"I know", she whispered, "But would you really want to love someone as you loved him?"

Settrigh blankly stared at the coffee table. As he thought about her words, he realized that he didn't. He didn't want to feel about anyone like he had felt about Aphelios because those feelings, those sensations, they were all part of their love, their years together, reason Settrigh had never been happier. He wanted happiness but he thought he would stop missing and loving Aphelios if a new love would feel the same. Wouldn't that make him fade only more?

He shook his head.

"Every time you feel love, it'll be different. Isn't that the beauty of life, dear? There are no repetitions. Everything, no matter how often you experience it, will be different and new. And from each love, you will grow."

She spoke those words with a tender smile and softly pinched Settrigh's cheek. Then she took a deep breath and Settrigh could hear the tears in her voice as she clasped his hand with the ring.

"I know it feels as though you aren't supposed to move on. But love is selfless and kind and he would want it."

Settrigh sniffled and his mother caressed his cheek, whispered that it was alright. He was allowed to feel lost. She would be there, guiding him back onto his path when he needed her to.

6

The next day, Settrigh took Aphelios' ashes and visited the opera house. He was holding the wooden box in his hands and stared at the building. He remembered how they had visited it all together on Christmas Eve a few years ago. He remembered the crowd gathering, all the finely dressed men and women and in the middle of it all his Aphelios in his suit, all flickering gazes and fumbling hands. He had been so nervous and Settrigh had held his hands in his to stop them from shaking.

"I believe in ya", and, "You'll be amazing."

Aphelios had looked up and Settrigh remembered the lights reflecting in his orbs. He remembered his taste when he had kissed him and he remembered the taste of his words.

"I love you, Settrigh."

Settrigh's hand shook and he was scared he might drop him and the necklace wrapped around his palm. Then he opened the casket and he looked at the gray. He watched it and he wondered how the memory could be so clear when Aphelios was nothing more than this. He was scared that, once he had emptied the wood, Aphelios would disappear from their home. But Aphelios deserved to rest where he had loved it most. Close to the music he had cherished so much.

He spread his ashes cautiously and gazed at the trail, taken away by the first winds of Spring. Soon, the flowers on their balcony would bloom again and he would think of his Aphelios. He would have to explain to them where his love had gone. He would do it with tears in his eyes but they would tilt their heads towards the new sun and continue to live. Settrigh would, too.

Aphelios had been his home. His doors and windows had been wide open to welcome Settrigh and the sun, to let fresh and beautiful air reach the furthermost and darkest corners of that house. He had been his home and Settrigh had never felt more complete and more secure in anyone else's house. Now that it was gone, all windows boarded up and the furniture thrown out, there was no way Settrigh could ever return. He didn't need to. He would build a new house, would find a new home. This time, within himself. And he would love and embrace it with his every fibre and adorn that house with everything he adored because he deserved to feel at home.

He deserved to rest.


	8. Part VIII - Sunrise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "When asked, Settrigh said that he had known back then already. That Aphelios was, as cheesy as it sounded, the love of his life."
> 
> Or, the sun always rises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to make you wait any longer so here is the very last and finishing part of this fanfiction. It is short but I hope it will bring you happiness nevertheless.  
> The final notes will be at the end. :)

Settrigh shuffled back inside hurriedly. March was still freezing cold without any sun. He had just lifted his gaze from his toes that were wet from the dew moistening the grass around the entrance when he suddenly noticed movement in the dark. Settrigh squinted his eyes and carefully approached the shadow standing at the elevator. Only as he got closer he noticed a box on the floor next to the man. He supposed it was a man. His shoulders were fairly broad despite the lean frame they were built on.

The flopping of Settrigh's slappers made him turn around eventually, not without startling just a tad. His shoulders had twitched at the unexpected sound. Settrigh instantly lifted his arms defensively and tried to grin not too awkwardly.

"Just me", he muttered as though they knew each other.

Now that they were facing each other, Settrigh could tell that he had been right. It was a man. A young one at that with soft and slim features and tousled, black hair covering most of his face. It seemed to bother him because he pursed his lips - Settrigh's eyes fell on them and he noticed how his cupid bow glistened in the dimness - and attempted to blow them out of his face before one of his hands quickly got the job done.

Although it was dark, Settrigh could tell that he was pretty. And tired. But mostly pretty. Very much so. From all those movies Settrigh had watched and all the novels he had read he knew that some people just had to ability to stir something deep inside one. That with the first locking of gazes there was that certain sensation in someone's belly or fingertips. A soft tingle, a mushy, intangible attraction to one's aura, to their way of just standing there and looking back.

When asked, Settrigh said that he had known back then already. That Aphelios was, as cheesy as it sounded, the love of his life. He liked to tell the story of their first encounter to their colleagues and in the spring of their fourth year together to the guests of their wedding.

He recited his exact words, laughing and saying that he had been so taken aback by Aphelios' beauty and Aphelios would roll his eyes at him. But then he would say that he had thought he was cute and quite attractive himself. Next, Settrigh's wide grin was wiped away by Aphelios' eager kiss, his husband's lips against his own and he wrapped his arms around him and held him close.

He held Aphelios close all night and the days and nights that followed, made overwhelming and blushing and shameless love to him and whispered against his lips and neck and thighs how much he loved him.

Sometimes, Sett had hunches, tiny nightmares about losing his love. He would wake up and embrace Aphelios especially tightly because he feared it might ever happen. He feared, in another universe - He had to be destined to meet Aphelios in every single one of them -, he might have already lost him, feared fate was angry, jealous of their completing love. Aphelios then always stroked his hair and told him that he would never leave him and even if fate tried to rip at the seams of their love, they would find their way back to each other no matter how many times they would have to fight for it. And, besides, Sett wouldn't know how to live without Aphelios. He said those words teasingly, softly and smiling but not taunting. Sett's love would never.

At some point, Sett asked Aphelios whether he would like to have a baby with him and Aphelios snorted and said that he doubted that was how male bodies worked. But he did. He would love to have a family with Sett. They filled out forms and talked to agencies and waited for what felt like eternities. Sometimes, Sett wished he could have a baby of their own, one that would look exactly like his husband. How endearing it would have to be. Whether it would have those creaseless eyes as well and the heart-shaped lips. Whether it would have Sett's red hair. Whether they would look at it and be able to tell that it was theirs. Of course, it wasn't possible and Sett would love any child they would get to call theirs.

The mother of the child was an oncologist who had never intended on becoming pregnant. She was at the peak of her career and said that he simply didn't have the time for a child all on her own without even a boyfriend. Pandora Micheals was a gentle woman and liked Aphelios. The feeling was mutual. They got along so well that sometimes, Sett would pull Aphelios against his chest and nibble on his neck just above the moon necklace he had gifted him a few months after their first encounter. And Aphelios would roll his eyes and say that he would never love anyone as much as Sett. Sett wouldn't either.

They decided on the name "Alba". It was Settrigh's idea to pay tribute to Aphelios' deceased sister. She had always been their parents' sunshine. Their Alba would be the sunrise that came after the night illuminated by Aphelios' gentle beauty and make the world brighter. Sett knew she would from the first moment he held her tiny body in his arms.

Sett started an entirely new album with pictures of their little family only and sometimes, Aphelios would take the pictures with him to the Elementary school he worked at to show them the baby. Aphelios told Sett about the expressions and sounds of endearment the kids made in the evenings when they held Alba, watching her fall asleep. They would snicker and kiss and Alba would gurgle and everything would be perfect.

With Aphelios, whom he loved so stupidly and imperfectly, every moment would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fanfiction means a lot to me. It is the first long piece I have finished in a very long time and I am incredibly happy that I can share this passion of mine with all of you.  
> I thank everyone who took the time to read, comment or leave kudos. Seeing how those words could move you brought me such great joy. Thank you to especially to the people who commented and never failed to make my day brighter with their sweet words. :)  
> A special thanks also to Jake, whose poor soul can finally rest now that he doesn't have to beta-read any of this anymore (:D), Moony whose input made me understand the depths of mourning and my friends' endless patience.  
> I will continue to write and post and hope to see some of you in future works.  
> If you would like to stay updated, my Twitter is @chaeyoongsao3 and here is the unofficial playlist/soundtrack to this entire fanfiction :) :  
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6IoBuuMzeT43Q5tAni4SbW?si=1Vc3ch4JRlKCmfZR5mHMhA  
> With that, I wish you a wonderful day!  
> Much love,  
> Lola


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